I owe you nothing
by Jackmir
Summary: What else would the God of Dreams be but a child? A closer look at Jareth, Sarah, and Toby and the adventure they shared once. I do not own Labyrinth, Jareth, Sarah, Toby, or any characters referenced herein. Rated T for some potential dark themes. Read and review, please!
1. Chapter 1

'"I owe you nothing," she snarled to a foe she could no longer remember, and who wasn't there anyway, drawing herself up the stone wall with the remnants of her ragged fingernails. The paths of the Labyrinth twisted and distorted before her eyes until up, down, left, and right became utterly indistinguishable from one another.

Her worn fingers skittered for purchase against the stones and found none. With a strangled cry of mingled despair and fury, she fell, sliding down the ever-shifting veins of the Labyrinth. Faster and faster she slid down the slick stones, yet no matter how fast or for how long she plunged, nothing arrested her movement. She could not even see what she might be falling towards.

As it happened, she never found out; as abruptly as the hellish slide began, it ended as a section of brick beneath her simply dissolved like mist, her fingers skittering uselessly against whatever chinks and gaps in the crumbling mortar she could still reach. Then, even that was gone. She landed with a soft thump in a bed of springy moss, with no more force than if she had elected to sit down rather abruptly.

Unseen birds chattered intermittently above her head. She blinked, still unused to the seamless, almost liquid transition of one setting into another. Straight-trunked trees loomed high above her, their branches intertwining in a lacy green canopy. Golden shafts of sunlight pierced through here and there, dappling the forest floor like carelessly thrown coins. She gulped in a greedy lungful of the fresh green air, reveling in the refreshment it offered her. A speck of gray caught her eye though, and she knew her reprieve was done.

A pair of smart, heeled boots dangled from the lowest branch on a tree some paces away, but when their owner spoke, his voice came from behind her. She was not particularly surprised.

"Sarah," he sounded bored, and faintly disappointed. "Are you ready to have done with this debacle yet?" His gloved hands moved fluidly, drawing a perfect crystal from nothing. He balanced it delicately on his fingertips, moving it with effortless grace from hand to hand.

"Forget about the baby," he urged, not bothering to hide how mechanical the offer was. Both of them knew it was doomed to be rejected time and time again.

She said nothing, but bit her lip and gave her head a sharp little shake, flyaway strands of her ebony hair sticking to her flushed, damp cheeks. She was no longer particularly afraid of the mystic king; she simply had nothing to say that a simple gesture would not cover. He nodded and sighed, as though he had expected nothing less. With a silvery quick movement, he tossed the crystal up in the air.

"Be on your way then, silly girl," he said without malice. The crystal swelled until it was nearly the size of the forest canopy above it. Then it came crashing down, bearing unfamiliar purple-tinged skies with it.


	2. Chapter 2

No, the skies weren't purple; Sarah flailed for balance and her limbs moved with a slowness that bordered on sluggish. She was under water somewhere. Light streamed in merry waves of purple over her. Her lungs burned as though she had been plunged into the water minutes ago, rather than seconds. She determinedly kicked towards the light, one hand.

Her fingers encountered the barrier just before her head did. Soft and flexible, like the plastic wrap that Karen often used to wrap up gift plates of Christmas cookies, but unbreakable as steel. Sarah pressed both hands against it, kicking furiously. The barrier held. Her mouth opened in dismay, and water, thick and sweet as peach juice flooded into it.

Something danced on the other side of the barrier, coming into clarity even as darkness lapped at the edges of her vision. A dark haired man in a gray suit was kneeling on the floor of a nursery, his back to her. Something like a stuffed doll was cradled in his arms. Sarah gave up trying to decipher the vision before it came to clarity, however; her need for air was a white hot agony, and she clawed desperately against the rubbery barrier that separated her from it.

From the depths beneath her, a rough hand seized her ankle. She could feel the strength in those fingers even through her sodden blue jeans. She tried without success to kick it away, the last remaining stored breath in her lungs escaping in a series of soundless screams that bubbled up to the now unreachable barrier and mockingly passed through to pop on the far side of it. Her vision danced and the black threatened to overtake it as the hand drew her swiftly down.

She never could pinpoint the exact moments when the world would shift, but she very nearly did this time. Somewhere between her vision fading to black and the last bubbles slipping between her lips, down became up and with an almighty jerk, she found herself being hauled out of the water to lie sprawled like a drowned rat on a patch of dusty stone.

White dots flashed before her eyes as her abused lungs drew in gulp after greedy gulp of dry air. "Sarah?" the voice was gruff, but almost hesitant. She would know it anywhere.

"Hogg-gull," she hiccoughed, turning aside to vomit out the seeming ocean of peach-water that had somehow made its way into her belly. The dwarf patted her on the back until she had divested herself of all aquatic intrusions. She let out a very weak, watery burp and slumped back to the ground, grateful for the warmth of the pale sunlight.

"What'in the hell were you doin'?" Hoggle demanded sharply, when it looked like she had recovered herself enough to answer him.

"Drowning," she answered drily. She propped herself up on her elbows and glanced back at the offending waters and blinked – the only indication that she was even slightly surprised. She was lying next to a brackish little pool that couldn't have been more than six inches deep. Reeds and dry grasses littered its surface in stiff bundles. Something clicked in her memory.

"No, it's not fair!" she groaned. There was no mistaking it, and a quick glance around confirmed it; Hoggle had just hauled her out of the little pond that nestled against the outer walls of the Labyrinth.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

In his throne room, Jareth frowned at the crystal balanced on his fingertips. He watched Hogwart – or whatever beastly name he preferred – helped Sarah to her feet, and led her towards his hut, doubtlessly for a hot drink and a blanket before she could catch her death of cold. Jareth bared his teeth at the dwarf in a snarl, not really caring that Hedgewort couldn't see it.

Beside his throne, a clock ticked in erratic rhythm, the hands spinning forwards, then backwards in little jumps. He ignored it. Sometimes the hands never moved at all. He liked to think that only then was the clock actually fulfilling its intended purpose. A cackling goblin with bushy eyebrows and a red and white striped hat shoved on its head ran past the king, likely chasing a chicken. Jareth ignored it too.

"Turn back, Sarah," he said softly to the image of the dripping girl. He turned the crystal in his hand, and the image of the man in the nursery materialized. The man was shouting instructions to someone beyond the scope of the crystal. Black hair hung like a skein of silk over his cradled arm. "Turn back before it's too late."


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah offered Hoggle a quick smile and gratefully accepted the steaming mug he offered her. She hadn't realized how cold she was until he had sat her down in the corner of his hut and wrapped a brightly colored woolen blanket around her shoulders. She took a sip from the mug, making a conscious effort not to scrutinize the murky contents too closely.

To her relief, it tasted infinitely better than it looked – sweet and familiar, like the brewed apple cider she had shared with her dad at the Ren fair he had taken her to for her thirteenth birthday. Better yet, it carried not so much as the faintest tang of peaches.

Sarah realized that Hoggle was anxiously awaiting her reaction, so she deliberately took a larger swig of it and shot him a smile. "It's delicious, Hoggle," she assured him honestly.

He shuffled his feet and mumbled something that sounded like "T'ain't nothin'." It was difficult to tell in the dimness of the hut, but Sarah could almost swear that the dwarf was blushing.

Sarah drained the last dregs of the cup in silence, surprised at the warmth that spread through her body and stilled her shivering limbs. Her clothes were beginning to stiffen up as they dried. Great, she grimaced, that was the last thing she needed; constant chafing as she ran around a magical shifting labyrinth. Fortunately, Hoggle chose to begin asking her questions at that moment, and the uncomfortable (and embarrassing) prospect of a thigh rash was at least momentarily forgotten.

"So…mind telling me how you ended up in the toi…..in the fairies' pond?" He asked, correcting himself before he horrified her too much.

Sarah shrugged. "Jareth," she responded blandly.

Hoggle blanched. "That's disgustin'," he spat. "Yeeccch." He kicked at the ground in agitation. Sarah raised her eyebrows; the dwarf seemed genuinely angry this time.

"He's done worse in the past, you know," she reminded him. "Remember when he sent the cleaners after us? Or the time he forced you to give me a poisoned peach?" Hoggle flinched at the memory. She didn't blame him. "And he obviously wasn't seriously trying to drown me, or he wouldn't have dumped me somewhere I would immediately be found," she pointed out.

He waved his hand dismissively. "This is different, Sarah," he insisted. "Danger's got nuthin' to do with it – it was embarrassin'. About the only place filthier than that pond is the Bog of Eternal Stench. It was disrespectful is what it was."

"You think he was trying to humiliate me?" Sarah fought the urge to sniff her drying clothing, consciously aware now that they did smell a bit….ripe. "Honestly I'd rather deal with that than the cleaners any day," she said drily.

Hoggle said nothing more, but busied himself with brewing her another cup of the steaming liquid, muttering snatches of curses that Sarah could only half hear: "dirty…mmmfungo...tight-pantsed…..rat…."

Sarah buried her face in her refilled cup to hide her laughter. She finished this cup more quickly than the last, discovering that she was now so warm and comfortable that she no longer needed the blanket. Her clothes on the other hand were uncomfortably stiff and unmistakably pungent. Her hair had dried in stiff, smelly clumps around her head.

"Hoggle, I don't suppose I could get cleaned up here before I head back into the Labyrinth….?" She resisted the urge to look around the hut for anything resembling a shower. Fortunately Hoggle immediately nodded.

"Out back, theres a bathing pool. You kin wash yer clothes too, if the fancy strikes you." He suggested with a surprising amount of tact.

Sarah offered him a dazzling smile and all but leaped out of her chair. "Thanks!" she called over her shoulder as she bolted out the back door.

"Sarah wait!" Hoggle stuck his head out the door before she could peel off her revolting clothing.

She paused in the act of lifting her shirt and sheepishly smoothed it back down with a silent internal groan. "What is it, Hoggle?" she asked, struggling to mask her impatient tone.

"It's just….are you sure there's time for you to do this?" he asked anxiously.

She slowly turned and favored him with the saddest, weariest smile he had ever seen in his life. "Are any of your clocks still working, Hoggle? Are anyone's? Because I know my pocket watch isn't. And I swear the sun hasn't moved an inch since we stormed the castle." She paused to watch resignation settle in the lines of his face. Of course he knew what she was talking about; everyone in the Labyrinth knew. "I think I have time for a bath and a quick clothing wash," she said gently.

Hoggle flinched anyway and closed the door sharply, leaving Sarah to her bathing. His gaze was drawn to the old cuckoo clock on his mantle, though he tried with all his might to resist it. The hands twitched back and forth across the thirteenth number, neither truly advancing nor retreating. "Damn you, Jareth," he growled helplessly, "what have you done to us this time?"

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Jareth tossed the crystal away, leaving it to shatter like common glass. There was no point in spying on things he couldn't change. This was getting out of hand; his subjects were in no true danger for the moment, he knew. They were like him, although to a far lesser and cruder degree; they had no more true need for food or drink than he did, so while the unchanging sun would have devastated the crops and starved nations anywhere else, it was at least one thing the Goblin King did not need to worry about.

Tossing her in Hedgewort's piss pot had been spiteful, childish really, but damned if it didn't make him feel a little better about the whole thing. For a moment anyway. She planned to run the Labyrinth again. Jareth pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache began to form. He had tried. Truly and honestly he did; he thought that if anything could make a girl as theatrical and dramatic as Sarah give up and go home, it might have been a healthy dose of humiliation. Danger had already proven ineffective.

Damn her courage. Damn her stubbornness too. Jareth kicked viciously a goblin that had wandered too close to his throne and felt not the slightest degree of satisfaction. He sighed and summoned up a goblet of Old World liquor – the strongest vintage he knew of, brewed in the heat of the star that had collapsed and eventually formed the basis for Sarah's home world.

He took a sip, savoring the shudder that racked his body as the alcohol infused his system. Any mortal would die just from the fumes it gave off – it packed quite a punch for Jareth as it was. He swirled the remainder of the liquor, brooding as Sarah's face appeared in its rippling surface, full lips set in a stubborn line, her dark hair spreading like a corona around her.

Even now, after the disaster her run of the Labyrinth had become, he could not help but be struck by her beauty and her determination. For the first time in nearly a thousand human years, Jareth wished he could simply send a runner home.

"Come to the castle then, you stubborn girl," he spoke half aloud to the image in his glass. "We are long overdue a talk. Come to me and then go home. For the love of all, just go home."


	4. Chapter 4

About an hour later, Sarah stood before the doors of the Labyrinth again. Hoggle sighed, and with a single gesture, opened the doors. He did not care for the hard, distant look in Sarah's eyes. This had all gone too far. He recalled standing here before with her, half-disbelieving that she would actually go through those doors. Hoggle stole a quick glance at her.

The first time Sarah had come to these doors, she had been an arrogant child – one who did not remotely grasp the severity of her situation. Her green eyes had flashed with determination, but it had been a child's determination to win a game, nothing more; excitement had trembled in her fingers as she crossed the threshold. None of that excitement flickered now – her determination was dogged now, an adult hell-bent on beating her foe.

"Sarah," Hoggle could not help but try to dissuade her one last time, "how many times? How many times have you done this now?"

She paused in her steps, one foot half lifted. "I don't know. Fifteen I think," she admitted.

Hoggle gaped at her. " _Fifteen?_ Sarah, when is it gonna be enough? How many times are you going to let that rat throw you back to the beginning before you admit this is pointless? You know he won't let you -"

Sarah's expression hardened, and before Hoggle could say another word, she was gone, whipping around the corner in a spray of black hair. The doors slammed shut behind her, clipping the dwarf short. He stared at the doors in silence. He made no move to follow after her this time. Without a word, he picked up his long discarded fairy-cide dispenser and went back to work, waiting for Sarah to reappear; he had all the time in the world to wait.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

"And then the wicked old woman cried: 'I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now!'"

Jareth jerked forward at the words, nearly falling out of his throne. A crystal materialized, unbidden in his hand. Peering into it, he observed a woman around the age of thirty sitting cross-legged on the floor, a large book spread open on her lap. Two giggling children with dark, close-cropped hair clung to her knees trying to see the pictures in the book.

Jareth groaned. This was the last thing he needed – two runners in the Labyrinth was never a good thing. It had clearly been an unintentional wish, so perhaps just this once…something twisted sharply in his stomach, and he doubled over in pain. The words had been spoken. The law stood.

"Go!" he gasped to his expectant goblins, eyes watering. "Go get the children, and don't let the woman see."

One by one, his goblins vanished from his throne room. The crystal in Jareth's hand dimmed as the lights in the children's room were cut off. The woman groaned and snapped the book shut, murmuring comforting words to her children as she carefully stood up and groped her way to the wardrobe, aiming for the emergency flashlight safely stored on the top shelf.

The children were gone as soon as her back was turned; it took less than ten seconds for their mother to notice the silence. As she frantically called out for them, seizing the flashlight and methodically searching every corner of the room, her panic grew with every empty inch the beam of light revealed. In the Underground, Jareth felt the pulse in his belly. It was time.

By the time he broke through the veil of the human world, he knew everything he needed to: her name was Helen Johnson, mother of twins Nevaeh and Josiah. She was a newly single mother, raising her five-year old twins with the off and on support of their grandparents. She occupied a fairly high position in an independent consulting firm, where her logical mind and no-nonsense attitude took root and thrived.

Most of the imagination she had once spared for magic and adventure had long since been turned to stretching thin budgets for worthwhile birthday parties, or making balanced meals on a thin paycheck. Even after her considerable talents caught the eye of her superiors and her wallet began to fatten, her imagination still sped, making contingency plans for every eventuality that might place her children's future in jeopardy.

Jareth was therefore not at all surprised when he materialized in the children's bedroom wearing a hooded black cloak drawn well over his eyes, his goblin armor replaced with tight leather that might have been purchased in any small-town specialty store. This was as close to a magical villain as Helen Johnson's sensible mind could understand. He was, however, taken a little off guard when she punched him in the stomach.

"Where. Are. My. Children." She asked in a voice that reminded him of chipped steel.

"Ooof!" Jareth actually stumbled back a step. The blow did not hurt exactly, but she had managed to hit squarely where the magic still throbbed, reminding him of the laws he must deliver. Still, he felt once again that rare flash of gratitude that came whenever he was reminded how wonderful it was to not be mortal. "Calm yourself, woman!" he snapped, holding his tender stomach.

Far from calming herself, Miss Johnson proceeded to land several quick successive blows to his face, sternum, stomach and groin. At that last, Jareth doubled over with a breathless little wheeze. Rather belatedly, one last scrap of information drifted sheepishly into his head. Helen Johnson. Ex-military. Discharged with full honors.

"Stop…" thunk. "It." Thwap! "Now!" He found himself backed into the wall under her onslaught; a mortal man would have had no unbroken bones left. "ENOUGH!" Jareth bellowed with enough force to make her pause in her attack. It was long enough for him to warp them both to the hill outside the Labyrinth.

"What the hell…?" she never got any further than that. Her eyes widened and her face paled as she stared at the alien landscape before her. It finally dawned on her that this was something new. Something out of one of her Grandmother's nonsense tales. An unbidden memory of her Grandmother's near reverent word rose up in her mind; up until her death, her Grandma Mamie had insisted that there really was a place where wicked spirits dwelled – a place she had simply called "the Other."

Since no further blows seemed to be coming, Jareth seized the opportunity to slip his information in. "Normally, I would offer you an exchange for the children you so foolishly offered," he said to the slack-jawed woman, "but you have made it patently obvious that you want them back." He pointed to the castle at the center of the Labyrinth. "Your children are there. No harm will befall them, regardless of the outcome of your challenge," he found himself compelled to add.

"My challenge?" Helen asked distantly, turning her shell-shocked gaze on the leather-clad man.

"Run the Labyrinth," Jareth answered flatly. He drew up a crystal and showed her the old china clock on her mantelpiece, ticking away happily. "I truly wish I could offer you more, but I can only give you until eleven o'clock by your world's time to try to make it to the center."

"That's in four hours," she said in a strained voice. "What happens if I don't manage to meet your time limit? What happens to my children?"

Jareth sighed and pushed his hood back. He met and held the mother's gaze. "They will never be harmed while they are in my care," he repeated clearly. "Beyond that I cannot say. But whatever happens, I can swear to you that they will not live unhappy lives."

She glared at him mistrustfully. "Go, Helen," he said firmly. "You are a warrior and a scholar. I suggest you utilize both these skills here, and you may yet make it to the center."

He had barely finished speaking before she was running down the hill. He watched long enough to will the doors open for her. He could do that much at least. Four hours. Sarah's voice rose unwelcomed in his mind. It wasn't fair.

He gritted his teeth as the doors slammed shut behind Helen, her military endurance and trained senses coming alive on this new, strange battlefield. Damn Sarah and what she had done to this place. If he could just convince her to go home….Jareth shook his head and warped back to his throne room, where Josiah and Nevaeh were already over their initial fright and were happily making friends with the goblins.

Jareth gazed out the window, where he knew their mother was coming for them, and where Sarah Williams was making another fruitless run. He impulsively conjured a crystal and watched Helen's ticking china clock. "I am truly, truly sorry," he said so softly that not even his goblins could hear.


	5. Chapter 5

It only took a few minutes (or hours – time really didn't seem to mean much anymore) for Sarah to pass through the sparkling outer ring of the labyrinth and into the sand-stone walls of the second layer – the broadest band of the Labyrinth, she suspected. The walls would still shift occasionally, but that too seemed to have largely stopped after her initial run. She drifted through the passages in no particular order, never doubting that she would reach the center.

Only once did the Labyrinth summon anything remotely challenging. She had rounded a narrow corner to find a dead end. Unperturbed, she turned back down the way she had come, and almost ran head-long into a wall that had quietly shifted while her back was turned, effectively trapping her in a sandstone cell.

She paused, running her hand absently along the wall. This was….new. The Labyrinth had always moved to confound her, not to trap her. Probably a new trick of Jareth's. She shrugged her shoulders tiredly and sat down; nothing really to do but wait. She lay down on the smooth stone path, her arms crossed behind her head, watching the frozen clouds in the sky. It was almost peaceful, she thought.

Almost reluctantly her weariness began to drain away as she allowed herself a few moments of peace in the sun. It is possible that she might have even drifted off to sleep had a large, loud, _something_ not vaulted over the wall at that moment, landing mere inches from the girl's exposed stomach.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Helen made her way at a smooth jog through the twisting corridors of the maze. 'Labyrinth', her mind automatically corrected. 'Shut up', she responded grumpily. She didn't really care about the semantics of what the damn thing was called; her babies were somewhere at the center with that bastard. If so much as one hair was out of place on either of their heads – Helen stopped her train of thought before it could get too creative with the Bastard's face; something was wrong here.

She had automatically catalogued each upcoming turn and opening in the path ahead of her. The third door on the left was now a smooth unbroken wall. Helen prided herself on having a dry cut, logical answer for every hiccup that crossed her path. What her commander in the military had expressed the most admiration in, however, was her fluid adaptability to alien situations. This one definitely qualified as alien.

Given what she had witnessed so far with the Bastard (she didn't know what his name was, but this one described him well enough in her opinion) there was definitely something unnatural – or supernatural about him and this whole damned place. That left only two possibilities for the vanishing door; she had either imagined it being there or it had actually disappeared. She was not prone to fits of imagination, so she easily accepted the latter.

Her mind smoothly made the leap; if the doorway had disappeared, that meant that physical attributes of the maze could likely change anywhere and at any time. There was almost a tangible click as the last bit of information slid home. The maze could change; she would likely never make it to the center in time to save her children.

A lesser woman would have fallen to her knees in despair. Helen Johnson recalled her commanding officer instead.

"Be prepared for anything, Johnson," he had barked at her during one of their training sessions. It had been a hand to hand combat lesson, and she had finally started to wear him down. Right when she was about to land a blow to his stomach, he had whipped out a bottle of low-grade pepper spray and landed a shot directly in her eyes.

When she screamed and fell blindly to the ground clawing at her eyes, her commander had shouted over her cries. "Do you think an enemy unit will always fight fair? Is that what you think, Private?!"

She had rolled into a ball, sobbing from her burning eyes. "N-no, Sir!" she had choked out, fighting the impulse to scoot as far away from him as possible.

"When the enemy breaks the rules," he had shouted, kneeling down so that he nearly spoke into her ear, "You break the rules right back. Don't ever fight fair when you know you can't win, Private! Forget honor codes! When confronted with an enemy you cannot beat, you –"

"-think outside the box," Helen murmured, eyeing the stone walls of the maze. She kicked off her shoes. Lesson number twenty-three: there is no better climbing tool than bare hands and feet. With a running leap, she scaled the wall and ran along the top of it. She ran down the path, the center in clear sight, until she came to a break in the stones. Unfazed, she dropped to the ground, ran along the next wall, and climbed back up, hopping down when needed.

She was near the end of the sandstone walls when she actually managed to leap over a lower wall and nearly landed on a young girl sprawled in the middle of the path.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Jareth gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. The crystal in his hand cracked and the image of Helen pushing Sarah up against the wall and shouting questions at her fragmented into a million pieces. It was now safe to say that it could truly get no worse.

"Your majesty!" one of his goblins cried, scurrying up to Jareth's throne with a scroll clenched in his tiny fist.

"What?!" Jareth ground out between his teeth. His headache was reaching monumental proportions.

"The council is coming, sir. They say it is time to stake their claims and decide on a winner now. The reaper is near."

The stone armrests of Jareth's throne crumbled like wet chalk beneath his grip. *Now* things could not possibly get any worse.


	6. Chapter 6

**~Author's note – Hey all you beautiful readers out there! Sorry for the inconsistency in the chapter lengths – this one is another biggie. Also, sorry for any formatting issues: this is only my second stab at a fanfic, and I'm still trying to figure out all the little tricks to the website. Thanks for all the reads, and again, feel free to review or offer constructive criticism – believe me, it is very much appreciated. Enjoy! ~**

Jareth stood at the window of his throne room, gazing silently out over the Underground Labyrinth, its shadows thrown into sharp relief in the perpetual midday light. He could not see into its passages from his position, but he didn't really care at the moment. He had gathered enough about Helen Johnson to know that she wouldn't really try to hurt Sarah once she was done with her questions; in all likelihood she would get back up on the walls and run straight for the castle, armed with whatever credible information Sarah had been able to impart.

The council would be arriving soon. Whatever "soon" meant was anyone's guess, however, so for now he would lean against the wall and gaze at the sparse beauty of his realm. Mingled laughter and crude jokes drifted up from the courtyard far below him. He ignored it with practiced ease. The goblins were a raucous bunch, but they had no objection to being noisy far away from his throne room if he so ordered; both of the Johnson twins were asleep now, and as the goblins were by nature too loud to be allowed around them while they slept, Jareth had banished the lot of them from the castle. Jareth was many things, but he was never one to deny rest to tired children.

He spared a glance at the sleeping pit in the center of the room, then did a double take. Nevaeh and Josiah were blissfully snuggled up, fast asleep with a pair of ragged stuffed animals that one of his goblins had fished from somewhere in the Junkyard. For now, Jareth had no real interest in them, however; his gaze was fixed on the third child sitting quietly on the lip of the pit, swinging his feet and smiling at the twins.

The child was considerably smaller than the twins – no more than two or three years old at the most, and he was radiantly beautiful; his skin shone with soft opalescence, his white hair drifted in sleepy wisps like a corona around his head, and his eyes burned as brightly as a new sun. He wore a simple white shift, like an old-fashioned nightgown, and his small feet were bare.

Jareth raised his eyebrows, but watched impassively as the child hopped soundlessly down into the pit. He regarded the sleeping siblings silently for a beat, then laid one pudgy hand on each brow. Nevaeh mumbled something unintelligible and cuddled up closer with the old yellow bear the goblin had found for her. Josiah's brow creased faintly, as though in deep thought, and he rolled over on his side with a little snore.

"That's not your jurisdiction, you know," Jareth said quietly, but with an unmistakable edge to his voice.

The child vanished from the pit and reappeared at Jareth's side. He stood barely as high as the King's knee. He shook his head smilingly, sending the wisps of his hair into lazy motion, as though adrift under water.

"All dreamers fall under my jurisdiction, regardless of the world they reside in," the child responded primly. Jareth sneered, but did not disagree, turning back to the window again.

The child raised his arms to the tall king, and Jareth obligingly scooped him up and deposited him on the window ledge. The child scooted forward and let his chubby legs dangle over the courtyard, swinging his feet carelessly above the open air. He quietly turned his own gaze to the Labyrinth, vaguely scanning the lower right quadrant. Jareth wondered if the child could see the runners any better than he himself could.

"Are you done playing games, then?" he asked instead, "Are you ready to see this whole debacle come to an end?"

The child did not answer at first, carelessly turning his gaze to the sky. "The council is coming, Jareth," he said presently, then fell silent. He watched a ragged-feathered bird wing its way across the sky, disappearing into the horizon. He sighed. "It was –you– who delayed the court convention for so long, not I," he reminded him.

"You carry more than a slim share of the blame," Jareth snarled, the stone window ledge indenting like soft clay under his rigid fingers. The child did not even flinch, damn him.

Instead he turned to regard Jareth, his eyes narrowed. "Perhaps that is so," he admitted coolly, "but you yourself brought me into this when you overstepped your boundaries," he reminded him. Jareth scoffed and looked away.

He started when the child placed a cool hand on his arm. Reluctantly, he turned back. Those sun-bright eyes were wide now, but not accusingly so. Their color had faded from a sharp blue to a muted gray of understanding; compassion even. Jareth wished he could vomit.

"You should not have tried to offer the girl her dreams, Jareth," he said almost gently. "She was still just a child. It was not for you to offer her the bargain at all." He searched the king's face for any indication that he understood.

Jareth understood, all right – understood perfectly, in fact, the true breadth of the disaster that that one single miscalculation had caused. But damned if he would allow the wide-eyed dream-god the satisfaction of admitting it. It had never been in Jareth's nature to admit his failings, and it likely never would be.

He rested his face against the cool stone of the window frame, feeling his headache return. The child slipped back into the throne room in the wake of Jareth's stubborn silence, likely to observe the dreams of the Johnson twins. Jareth allowed himself a single sigh as he scanned the Labyrinth again. Not for the first time he found himself bitterly reflecting that messes like this would never happen if the Gods were half as omnipotent as the mortals believed them to be.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

"I said 'where is the Bastard that took my children?'" Helen demanded again, slamming the dark-haired woman harder against the wall. The younger woman let out a strangled squeak and Helen loosened her grasp ever so slightly.

"The castle at the center of the Labyrinth," the woman choked out. "Please, I'm not your enemy; I'm not a creature of the Labyrinth – I don't even belong here!"

"Is that so? Because you seemed pretty cozy when I found you here!" Helen pointed out, shoving the young woman up against the wall again by her collar. The girl whimpered again and shook her head, her fingers fluttering like frightened moths over Helen's clenched fist.

"I swear," she gasped raggedly. "I swear, I'm here just like you. Please, I'm trying to get my brother back – "

"And you decided to what? Take a nap while you were at it?" Helen snorted and tightened her grip. The young woman's eyes bulged in fright. "At best that makes you a shit excuse for a sister."

The girl shook her head mutely, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly. Her fright and surprise were indisputably genuine; she was telling the truth. Helen let her go and stepped back, ignoring her as she coughed and rubbed her throat. She was more scared than hurt, and either way, now that she was an established non-threat, she was no longer Helen's problem.

Helen scanned the walls. Where had she come in again? She stretched and prepared to scale the wall again to get a bead on her surroundings.

"Wait, please," the girl said timidly. "Please, I haven't seen another person in so long – "

Helen stopped her with a gesture. "Look, honey," she said sharply, "I'm sorry, but that's not my problem." She hooked her fingers into the deep cracks in the stone mortar and scaled the wall with near-feline grace. She paused at the top, looking back at the dark-haired woman, forlornly looking at a new-formed passage in the maze.

Helen pushed a hand through her tight curls. She had two hours left by her estimation, and no idea when her current strategy might fail her, so she really could not afford to – "damn it," she said to herself.

"What's your brother's name, girl?"

The dark-haired woman in the drama-club shirt turned back eagerly. "Toby! Toby – his name is Toby," she stammered excitedly.

"What's he look like?" Helen asked absently as she calculated the distance she had left to cross. No more than forty-five minutes, she concluded, barring any unforeseen complications.

"He's just a baby – he's a little over a year-old. He has curly auburn hair and red and white striped pajamas." She couldn't seem to stop talking now. Helen frowned, tuning out most of her babble. Something she had said earlier struck a chord with her.

"You said you 'hadn't seen another person in so long,'" she interrupted the girl. "What does that mean? I thought the Bastard only made people run this maze for a few hours?"

The girl nodded eagerly. "He did! That is – when I first came here, he gave me thirteen hours to get my brother back, but I –"

"Thirteen hours?!" Helen interrupted incredulously. "That bastard gave you thirteen hours to run this damn thing? He only gave me four!"

The girl shrugged helplessly. "Maybe he had more confidence in your ability to do it," she ventured sadly.

Helen shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said brusquely. "How many hours do you have left to get your brother back?"

Mingled puzzlement, despair, and frustration flitted across the young woman's face. "I don't exactly know," she admitted. "Just as my time ran out, I rescued my brother. At least," she added bitterly, "I thought I did. I fought my way to the castle in just under ten hours, I found my brother, and even squared off with Jareth. The blonde man who took your kids," she added at Helen's quizzical look.

"At the last stroke of the clock, I swear I was back in my house, Toby was asleep in his crib, and my dad and step-mom were coming home from their date…but the next morning, I woke up and found myself back here."

Helen searched her face (a difficult task from eight feet above her) and asked as gently as she could: "if what you say is true, then how can you be certain that he still has your brother?"

The girl shook her head listlessly. "I can't. But I have nothing else to go on. So until he either forces me to stop, or proves to me that my brother is safe, I'll keep running this Labyrinth over and over, and maybe one day, it will finally be done."

There was no time left to waste. "I have to go now," Helen said gently enough, turning to face the castle. "I have to get my kids back. But I promise you this: if I see your brother, I will do everything in my power to save him too." The girl nodded sadly, as though it was beyond her power to hope anymore. On impulse, Helen turned back one last time. "What is your name, hon?"

"Sarah," the girl replied a little more clearly. "Sarah Williams."

Helen offered her the warmest smile she could muster. "Mine is Helen Johnson. Good luck to you, Sarah. And I swear I will kick his ass for both of us."

She thought Sarah offered a ghost of a smile at that, but she did not linger to see it. Helen was running down the wall full-force towards the castle. Sarah Williams. Even as her mind turned back to calculating the distance she could jump from wall to wall, a part of Helen's mind itched quietly. Sarah Williams. She could almost swear she had heard that name before.

At that moment, however, she came to a section of wall too distant to leap, and the recognition of Sarah Williams was swept away under the wave of her frustration. She was a warrior and a mother. And she was coming for the bastard that took her children.


	7. Chapter 7

On her very first run through the Labyrinth, Sarah had encountered a quartet of warty riddlers, who offered her safe passage out of the sandstone ring on a game of truth and lies. At the time, Sarah had been so proud of herself for solving the riddle (more or less – she never settled on that point) that she failed to consider the most obvious answer: the game itself was founded on a lie. They had told her that theirs was the _only_ door out of the second ring. It took only one more run for Sarah to realize that was the biggest load of crap they had handed her.

Getting out of the second ring was as simple as finding a wide gap in a wall, or wandering around until the Labyrinth shifted and opened a straight channel out of the sandstone and into its brambly green heart. She spared no more than a passing thought to the lying riddlers as she rounded a dusty stone corner and squelched down into thick mud. No transition, nor break in the wall. She rolled her shoulders and continued walking; she had long since become accustomed to the idea that if she were to turn back, the stone corridors would be gone.

Something flitted above her head and disappeared into the tangled forest. A snatch of laughter came from somewhere deeper; the halt of time had obviously not dampened the fireys' sense of fun, it seemed. She carefully skirted the area the laughter seemed to be concentrating – the last time she had encountered the gangly orange creatures, they had attempted to yank her head off her shoulders. She feared very little in the Labyrinth now, but having her head pulled on really was quite uncomfortable. A girl could only be expected to endure so much hardship after all – even on a fairy tale adventure.

She pressed on, her senses numb to the savage beauty that crept in the forest around her. She passed unseeing through vibrant, fleshy blossoms bursting from thick ropes of vine, stepped heedless over thick carpets of jewel-bright moss and flowers. She breathed past the heavy perfume of green things, scanned only for the sight of the castle, and thus missed the small fawn colored creature that sprang into the underbrush at her approach, wide cerulean eyes cautiously marking her departure.

Few of the rules of the Labyrinth applied to the forest, yet despite that (or perhaps because of it) in some ways it was the gentlest place to be. And the most dangerous. Wild things lurked under the tree roots and behind the thick canopy of leaves. Things that had never been beholden to the name of Jareth. But Sarah didn't know that. So onwards she marched, steering idly to the left some when the first rancid whiffs of the bog reached her nose.

She knew that there was a wall somewhere in here that reconnected to the rest of the Labyrinth. Dimly, it occurred to her that despite the changeable nature of the maze, she had usually come across the wall by now. She spied a tree with low-hanging limbs. The trunk looked slender, but then, so was she – abruptly she decided to take the chance.

She crossed over, seized one of the branches, and swung herself up into the upper limbs. She pulled herself up, branch by branch, her nails digging into the soft, gray bark. There was one more branch above her that protruded above the canopy. Surely she'd be able to get a bearing on her surroundings from there. She inched her way out on her current branch, one hand braced against the tree trunk. She reached for the limb above her; it was just barely too far.

She let go of the trunk and inched just a little farther out. The branch beneath her feet let out an alarming crack. She squealed and lunged prematurely for the limb above her. Her fingertips brushed against it, and for one tantalizing moment, she thought she had it. Then gravity took over; her feet landed on the outer edge of her former branch, she pinwheeled wildly for purchase.

For one moment she hung suspended, her dark hair flying around her face, her pink lips open in a silent "O" of surprise. Then she fell. She yowled in pain as she glanced off the side of a lower limb. Her shirt rucked upwards, a friction rash burned across the skin of her pale belly. Still she fell, seemingly in slow motion, though the snap of smaller twigs came like gunshots. A broken twig drew blood from her cheek. She was going to die. She had fallen so far.

The top of the tree grew more and more distant as the ground approached. Then she impacted something huge and soft. Two strong arms cradled her like a baby, one beneath her knees, the other under her shoulder blades.

"Ooof!" all of her breath was forced out of her body by the impact, and she sagged like a limp rag doll against her rescuer. Dark spots danced before her eyes, bizarrely enough against an orange backdrop.

"Sawah? Sawah hurt?"

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

 _Almost there_. Helen's breath was beginning to come in shorter bursts. She had not had to do anything this strenuous in years. Down and up she climbed, and on and on she ran. The castle loomed ever closer. Then she realized a wonderful thing, a beautiful magical wonderful thing. Tears pricked her eyes at the sight; only three walls remained between her and that castle.

Nevaeh. Joshiah. "Mama's coming, babies," she whispered, only dimly aware she had spoken out loud. Joyfully she tore across the last few meters, new strength flooding on the adrenaline in her veins.

She stood before the gates of the castle within minutes, sweat pouring down her cinnamon skin, her dark hair plastered in curls to her scalp. And nothing happened. Minutes passed. No one came to challenge her or welcome her.

With a frustrated cry she launched herself at the protective walls, trying to claw her way up them as she had the Labyrinth. She had gained only a meter or so when the gates swung open with a disgruntled, rusted squeal. Helen darted inside before they opened more than halfway. God help anyone who tried to get in her way now.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

Jareth watched impassively from the window of his throne room as the small figure of Helen Johnson tore through his courtyard. There was a sound of clanking metal as the captain of his guards rushed to the King's side.

"Sire!" he cried, forgetting to bow again. "The mother has breached the castle walls! Shall I send my troops to engage her?" he tried sincerely to conceal his eagerness. This was really the most exciting thing to happen in a very long time. Even by the standards of a goblin's attention span.

The king did not answer. The captain shifted impatiently.

"Sir?" he pressed, tightening his grip on his little spear.

Jareth did not even turn from the window. "No," he said abruptly.

The captain blinked. He reached up and dug a mass of black wax from his ear. Surely he had not heard the king correctly. "Say that again, sir?"

"I said 'no', you twit. Do not allow any of your forces to engage her. Do not attempt to even hinder her progress. Leave the pathway open; she means to face someone today, and I'd prefer it be me."

The captain bowed clankily, hiding his disappointment. Perhaps he could send his troops after the Williams girl again, instead. "Yes, sir," he sighed. He turned and trudged back into the hallway, dragging his spear forlornly. His finest officers were waiting eagerly in the hallway. Their faces dropped though, when they saw his; there would be no fun today either.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Helen took little notice of the town around her – any other time she would have been struck by the small size of the doors and windows, as well as the impractical, nearly dangerous nature of their sloppy designs. Now she simply noted no forthcoming resistance and ignored the rest, pounding down the cobblestone streets like a madwoman. Like a soldier.

The castle. The door was open, she noted briefly as she breezed through it. Her babies were waiting. Something tickled at her memory. Toby. She had promised Sarah Williams she would try to find Toby as well.

She surged up the winding stairs. Her children were close, she knew intuitively. She was so hell-bent on finding her children that when the truth struck her, it landed as a nearly physical blow, leaving her gasping on her knees, still dragging herself up the stairs. Toby was short for Tobias. Sarah and Tobias Williams.

 _I haven't seen another person in so long…he's just a baby…I thought I rescued my brother….keep running the Labyrinth over and over…_

It couldn't be. The pieces clicked together even as she pulled herself to her feet and shoulder-slammed open a door that turned out to lead to a filthy throne room. Her children were curled peacefully around some mangy stuffed animals in a stone pit in the floor. As she ran to them and scooped them up, oblivious to the medieval surroundings that faded away like an old watercolor painting, the truth throbbed like a broken bone.

She knew Sarah Williams. Of course she did – the case was the highlight of a media frenzy currently. She scarcely even noticed that she stood in her own living room now, so focused was she on the twins clutched in her arms. Sarah in the Labyrinth had barely been a woman, but her face was undeniable the same. She knew Sarah Williams alright, and Tobias. Sarah Williams was still beautiful, but she was forty four years old; she had also been in a coma for thirty years.

Tears of mingled joy and horror fell into her children's hair as it finally dawned on Helen where they were. She and her babies were safe now. She felt with a sinking certainty in her belly that Sarah never would be.


	8. Chapter 8

Helen carried the sleeping twins into her bedroom and laid them down softly on her bed. She quietly turned on her television and flipped to the local news station. She had been brought back in time for the eleven o'clock news. She caught her breath as the starch-blonde anchor in a tailored red blazer appeared, smiling plastically at the camera. Helen anxiously watched the scrolling blue ribbon of trending news at the bottom of the screen and her heart dropped; there was Sarah's name, tucked between US Foreign Policy and a rash of home burglaries.

"….the police chase concluded in downtown North Hampton at seven o'clock this evening, and I have just been informed that the suspect is in custody." The anchor shuffled the papers on her desk without a glance – most likely they were blank anyway. "In somewhat sadder news, the case of Sarah Elizabeth Williams is nearing its conclusion after nearly thirty years."

The screen flashed to photographs of a tall, white, Victorian-style house. A beautiful dark haired teenager was kneeling by a shaggy sheepdog in the front yard, laughing at the camera.

"On June 27th, 1987, Robert and Karen Williams asked their daughter, Sarah to babysit their infant son while they went out to dinner together. When they returned home just a few short hours later, they found their world turned upside-down."

A slow slide-show progressed across Helen's television screen. Sarah with an older, stunning woman, too close in resemblance to be anyone other than her birth mother. Sarah in a grainy photograph, blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Sarah holding a baby in her arms, looking over his head to someone beyond the borders of the picture, the tiniest suggestion of a frown on her face.

"At some point in the evening, an intruder apparently broke in to the Williams residence. Evidence from the scene strongly suggested that this intruder broke in through the master bedroom, which doubled as baby Toby's nursery. When the Williams returned home from their date, it was tragically too late to prevent the attack."

The screen flashed to archived footage from an old interview. The white tag on the bottom left of the screen identified it as being filmed two weeks after the break-in. A woman with tightly coifed blonde hair stood next to a tall handsome man with short hair and glasses. Sarah's father and step-mother, Karen and Robert, the screen helpfully supplied. Although Karen's makeup was impeccable, and Robert had a practiced lawyer's stoicism, the strain and dark circles were plain on their faces, even against the poor quality of the 1980s film stock.

"When we came home that night," Karen began, then stopped, her voice breaking. It was difficult to tell through the quality of the old footage, but it looked like Robert might have squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. She tried again. "When we came home, and Sarah didn't answer our calls, I ran up to the nursery. Sarah had been angry with me about having to babysit again, and, I guess I thought she might have left him alone out of protest." She swiped at her reddening eyes.

"But she hadn't?" an off-camera interviewer asked gently. Karen shook her head, her shoulders visibly trembling now. Robert murmured something into her ear, and she shook her head again, clearing her throat thickly.

"When I came into the nursery, the balcony doors were wide open, the carpet was absolutely soaked with rain, but Toby was in his crib, safe and sound. I don't know how he managed to sleep through it. Sometimes I," her breath hitched in a sob. "Toby usually _can't_ sleep unless someone holds him and talks to him. It seems impossible, but Sarah must have somehow…she tucked her favorite teddy bear into the crib with him after that horrible man….." she buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Muffled sobs leaked between her fingers.

Apparently she had been unable to compose herself; the tape ended there. The dye-job blonde was back on-screen now, the high definition colors of her suit and lipstick almost offensive after the muted quality of the old footage. Her face twitched imperceptibly. Helen let out a disgusted snort; she was trying to rearrange her botoxed features into some semblance of a sad expression.

"While the mysterious intruder – assumed male – was never brought to justice, his intentions never came to fruition. Local authorities concluded that the point of the break-in, combined with the Williams social and political standing made it clear that whoever this person was, they came with the intention to harm or abduct the infant Toby."

Helen found herself nodding. The details were all wrong, but they had still managed to hit pretty close to the truth. Close enough for government work, as her squad members would have said.

"Whoever this intruder was, when they broke in, they met with an unexpected resistance." One last photograph flashed across the screen. Sarah was on a swing, her hair flying forward, surrounding her face. Whoever had snapped the picture had managed to angle it just well enough that it was clear that she was laughing. Carefree and innocent as a child.

"Fifteen-year-old Sarah Williams apparently intercepted the intruder and engaged him in a desperate fight for her younger brother. While her heroic efforts ultimately succeeded – the intruder had long since fled by the time her parents came home – it came at a terrible cost."

An old newsprint photo was brought into focus as the anchor continued talking. Sarah in a hospital bed, a ventilator tube taped securely between her lips, a welter of IV lines piercing her veins, white bandages wrapped like a forlorn crown around her head.

"While the exact nature of the injuries she sustained remains a mystery, Sarah was listed as being in 'critical' condition upon her admission to the hospital. The attending physician, Dr. Samuel Dorian said in his official report that her injuries were 'bizarre', claiming that while there was some evidence of superficial defensive wounds, her most severe injuries were inconsistent with a physical altercation."

Helen wet her lips. The Labyrinth. Sarah had somehow sustained all of her injuries in the Labyrinth. She said she had faced Jareth but…something was off. Helen hated that bastard with every nerve in her body, but she still could not see him inflicting injuries like these on Sarah. He had not even moved to defend himself when she attacked him in her own children's nursery.

"…has remained on life-support ever since that evening. Tonight after a sustained court battle between Linda Williams-Sarver and Tobias Williams, the courts have ruled in favor of the latter; at midnight tonight, Sarah Williams will be taken off of life-support. More on this story will be available at that time. In local politics….."

Helen's heart skipped several beats. Almost unwillingly she turned towards her digital bedroom clock, the insipid reporter blandly rambling on in the background. The red numbers glared at her: 11:29.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Jareth felt the familiar pulse in his belly as wave after wave of alien magics appeared in his realm, rubbing against his own like so many cats greeting one another. The council was here. There was no more time.

He conjured a crystal with an absent flip of his hand. He needed to find Sarah and bring her to the castle. There was so little time, and Sarah still deserved to know the truth before she was flung into the middle of it. He turned the crystal impatiently. Where the devil was she now?

She bloomed into view suddenly, a white lily in the dark forest. Jareth frowned at the image. Someone was with her. He turned the crystal again. Sarah was holding hands with a great, orange, yeti-like creature, who was leading her towards a long, brambly tunnel. Jareth swore an oath that widened the eyes of the most colorful speakers in his court and disappeared with a loud bang.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Ludo's hand was warm on Sarah's as he guided her through the trees. His strong, gentle hand made her feel the first weak whimper of reassurance since her tea with Hoggle. There was little comfort to be found for her in the Labyrinth now.

She frowned a little as he led her deeper into the trees. A vague sense of unease tickled unpleasantly in her belly.

"Ludo? Where are we going?"

He squeezed her hand and smiled at her, his big guileless eyes innocent of malice.

"Sawah, fwiend," he gurgled reassuringly.

She smiled uneasily. The trees pressed in on them, tight-woven branches and clustered trunks forming a rude tunnel. Her eyes widened; green light bloomed at its end. Warm wind blew down the tunnel bearing an animal musk so strong that tears came to her eyes. She pulled her hand back and pinched her nose, struggling to breathe through her mouth.

Ludo held out his hand again. His big eyes pled with her. "Sawah, twust Ludo? Ludo fwiend."

She narrowed her eyes at him. There was a trace of guilt in his expression. She backed away from him. "Ludo," she asked softly. "Ludo, what are you doing?"

Ludo never had a chance to answer. An arm encircled Sarah's waist and jerked her back, provoking an indignant yelp. She tried to twist away, but the arm tightened like a band of iron. She did not even have to turn around to know who it was.

"Jareth, let me _go_!" she hissed.

Instead he pulled her closer, turning his body smoothly so that he stood between her and Ludo. His eyes might have been chipped from ice.

"If your master wants her," he snarled, "he will attend the council meeting. And if you, or your master _ever_ attempt to spirit away a candidate again, the full wrath of the gods will be brought down upon you all."

With that, both the king and his prize disappeared with an angry pop, leaving Ludo alone in the forest. His roar of defiance raised stones up to two miles away.

"Ludo!" Sarah cried, but her words fell flat. White. Everything around her was white. At some point, Jareth had released his hold on her.

White above her. White below her. White all around. The sound of her own breath seemed to disappear into the nothingness.

"Sarah," Jareth said wearily from behind her.

She turned to face him more at his tone than his actual words. Jareth was slouched a yard or so away from her. Weariness emanated from every line of his body. He raised his eyes to meet hers. She found her indignation dying on her lips at the sadness present in them.

"Sarah, the games are over. It is time that you learned the truth; you have proven many times over that you deserve no less than that. I need you to listen to me carefully; this is the last time I can alter time for you, and it will give us no more than a few minutes. Can _you_ grant me that?"

Mutely, she found herself nodding. Dread twisted in her belly. Underneath it there was something cooler, something almost like relief. She had known this was coming, hadn't she?

"Sarah, why are you still here? Why didn't you just go home when I asked you too?"

Sarah swallowed, feeling like her throat was lined with sandpaper. God help her, he was _pleading_ with her. Where was the villainous sneer? The arrogant tilt in his eyes? She tried to speak and wheezed instead. She wet her lips and tried again.

"Toby…." she started to say, but Jareth cut her off with a dismissive gesture.

"The games are done," he repeated emphatically. "Sarah, now more than ever, it is imperative that you speak only the truth. Now tell me – why are you still here?"

It came welling out of her then: the tide of despair she had desperately tried to stem. The stink of her own failure. "Because I failed to save Toby," she admitted in a broken whisper. She hung her head as burning tears of shame and anger slipped down her cheek.

She never even heard him cross the distance between them. Suddenly one gloved hand rested heavily on her shoulder, and with the other he gently raised her chin up so that their eyes were locked.

"Is that honestly what you believe?" he asked. Sarah wondered if she imagined the surprise in his voice.

"It's what I _know._ " She answered decidedly. "I wouldn't have woken up back in the Labyrinth afterwards if I actually managed to….." she trailed off. His expression was mostly unreadable, but she swore that she caught flickers of great sadness in it.

"You thought you….failed?" he repeated. Belatedly, Sarah realized that she had mistaken his shock for indifference. "You have caused more of a stir than any human has in thousands of years, suffered endlessly, and defied the requests of a god _because you thought I still_ had your brother?"

She stumbled back from him. Bile rose in the back of her throat. "You don't have him?"

He did not have to respond. The look on his face said it all. Sarah turned away and was abruptly, violently sick. Her head spun. It was all for nothing. He didn't have him. _He didn't have him._

She wiped her mouth with a shaking hand. "Send me home then."

"I can't."

"You asked me to go home just a few hours ago! Why can't you do it now?"

"A few –" Jareth narrowed his eyes. "How long do you think you've been in the Labyrinth?"

She shrugged dully. "I lost track of time. A month or so, I guess. Sometimes it feels like longer. Long enough to run the Labyrinth fifteen or sixteen times, at any rate."

He was staring at her with open horror now. "You don't remember them, do you? Any of them. Of course you wouldn't. It would have been beyond human retention."

Sarah glared, but did not ask him to clarify; she realized with a flash of insight that he was talking more to himself than to her.

"Why can't you send me home?" she repeated with forced patience.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "The time for that has long passed. The last time I begged you to go home was around twenty eight years ago. After that, no power of the gods could have possibly sent you home safely."

Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. Her heart thudded in her ears, painfully slowly. Her knees turned to water and she fell to them with a thump, her shoulders slumping as all the strength drained out of her body.

Jareth sat down across from her, but thankfully made no move to comfort her again. She didn't think she could have borne it if he had. Instead he gave her a long, serious look. And for the first time in her life, Sarah realized that she was being addressed as an adult. As an equal.

"Understand, Sarah, that there is nothing I can do to undo all that has happened. I will do my best to explain it all; it is a rather lengthy story, I fear, so I must request that you keep your questions to yourself. Do you understand?"

Sarah let out a bark of bitter laughter. "I don't suppose I'm in any hurry anymore. Explain away, Goblin King."

And he did. And she wished that she had never been asked to babysit her brother that night.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey again, lovely readers! Sorry it's taken me so long to post a new chapter – I've got several other project children that have been bouncing around my head and demanding my attention. Also, for some reason, this chapter just did not want to be written, it seemed. But here it is! We only have a few chapters to go! This one might be the last super long one. Read and enjoy (and possibly review?) Edit – ok, scratch that. This chapter is –monstrously- long. I promise that this is the last Moby Dick chapter in this story though! Happy reading!**

Jareth lowered himself so that he was directly at Sarah's eye level, affording her an intimate glimpse of his mismatched pupils.

"Firstly, Sarah, you must understand this: magic is a terrible and powerful force that cannot and should not ever be used lightly." Sarah gave him a patient look; she didn't understand. Jareth sighed. "You did so unintentionally, Sarah, just as Helen did, but you still invoked an ancient and powerful magic. What's more, you invoked it _successfully._ "

At this, Sarah abruptly forgot her promise to listen without interruption and blurted out, "Just by saying 'I wish the – '" she hissed as she drew a sharp breath, faint alarm in her eyes.

"The words unaccompanied by the ritual are meaningless, Sarah," Jareth assured her. 

"I performed no ritual," Sarah insisted flatly.

"Cease your petty interruptions, and I will explain it to you," he snapped. She blanched, but when it became apparent that she would not speak again, he continued. "All true magical spells have consequences, Sarah, because a true magical spell is nothing more or less than a contract struck with a God."

He paused to let his words sink in. Sarah was still giving him a skeptical look. Then, deep in her eyes, he saw the comprehension ripple outward. Still on her knees, Sarah scuttled backwards and away from him. ' _You?_ ' she mouthed silently. Jareth noted that her porcelain skin had gone as white as salt. Her pond-green eyes darkened with shock.

"A forgotten God," he confirmed with a slight inclination of his head. "The God Who Is Two,' I was once called. 'The Half Father.' I am a split God, Sarah – I am both the Protector of Lost Children, and the God of Women's Desire."

Sarah let out a noise halfway between disgust and disbelief – a sort of a choked snort. Jareth ignored her and continued on.

"It began many ages ago with an impoverished, beautiful, young mother named Sarde, whose husband had been killed by a pack of hungry wolves while hunting. Now alone, Sarde's beauty had not gone unnoticed, nor had her firm limbs, and healthy coloring. A powerful man set his sights on her, loudly boasting of his intentions to all within earshot.

"Sarde soon heard of his boasts, and was greatly afraid; while she accepted her reclamation by another man as all but inevitable – be still, Sarah. It was the law of its time – she feared (quite correctly) that the man would throw her baby to the wolves and rid himself of all reminders of his dead rival.

"One night, not long after she had first caught wind of the man's intentions, a neighbor burst into her hut and warned her to flee with her baby, for the man was coming for her with his hunting companions in tow. Desperate, Sarde snatched up her child and fled into the forest, running until the encroaching darkness and rumbling thunder forced her to seek shelter in an unused hunter's lean-to.

"At that moment, the dark clouds burst forth, bringing with them a storm like none Sarde had ever seen. She huddled in the meager shelter, unable to see, let alone run past the driving rain. And yet, over the sound of the rain, a new sound reached her ears: the drum of hoof beats. The men were coming still.

"Sarde clutched her weeping baby and seized the only avenue of hope she had left: scarcely daring to believe that it would ever succeed, she called upon the village God to take her child away from the assured death bearing down on him."

Sarah's eyes burned into his. He could feel the weight of her unasked question. He shook himself in irritation – now was not the time for dramatic pauses.

"When her pursuer finally came upon the hut, he found his prize cowering alone in the lean-to, her child nowhere to be seen."

"You mean you didn't…." Sarah faltered, the interruption rule forgotten once more.

"Didn't what, Sarah?" Jareth's teeth glinted unpleasantly. "Didn't save her too? Was it not enough that I spared her child from a terrible fate?" 

"So you simply left her there for that man to use as he would like a toy," Sarah accused, green eyes flashing.

"Gods are _not_ omnipotent, Sarah!" Jareth's shout startled both of them. With a visible effort, he calmed himself down. When he spoke again, his voice held some semblance of calm, "Gods are bound to act only upon prayers and whims that fall within the wedge of their own power. Even if I had wanted to help her escape her situation, it was beyond my power to do so."

Sarah stared at him helplessly. She shook her head mutely to indicate that she did not understand. There seemed to be much of that lately.

"Sarde was not a child, and so I could not act as her guardian. Nor did she desire for me to ease her deep loneliness with comfort or intimacy. And so I could not spirit her away as a ravenous lover. The most I could do was assure her that her child would never suffer from hunger or the elements. For Sarde, it was enough," he explained curtly.

"Sarde was the first to actively wish away her child, but she was by no means the last. The story spread of the miraculous – some would say cursed – disappearance of her baby with all the blind ferocity of a forest fire. Many a mother in dire straits called upon me in the years that followed to spare their children from fates they could not be protected from.

"But magic is as changeable as the mortals who call upon it, Sarah. And I am a dual God by nature. It was only a matter of time before this spell of protection – deemed the Mother's Lament – became twisted to the selfish desires of a frustrated young woman who longed for the freedom she perceived she had lost to her screaming child."

Sarah's face flushed like a dull brick. She found suddenly that she could not meet Jareth's eyes.

"Why so embarrassed now, Sarah?" for a wonder, his voice held no teasing tone. Simple, honest curiosity was all. "You were merely the latest in a long tradition that spanned many generations and many species - humans are not the only sentient peoples in your plane of existence, you silly girl," he added drily in response her stunned silence.

"For many years, in nearly equal measure I would be called to spirit away children whose mother's feared for their lives, and children whose mothers – or aunts….or sisters – allowed their resentment of the helpless creature to dwarf all desire to protect it any longer."

"And….how many of them tried to take their children back?" Sarah's voice barely rose above a whisper, dreading the answer even as she asked the question.

Jareth merely raised one eyebrow. "How many goblins did you encounter on your first run through my Labyrinth?" he countered.

Her lips whitened as she pressed her knuckles into them, muffling her dismayed groan. It took some moments before she could fortify herself sufficiently to talk to him again. Jareth was nonetheless vaguely impressed when she met his eyes. Most mortals would have been in hysterics presented with the truth he had finally revealed to her.

"That doesn't explain what I'm still doing here," she said at last. Jareth blinked, surprised. Sarah really would not let go once she had seized upon a single path. Or desire. Deliberately, he turned his mind away from that particular avenue of thought.

"Yes," he said slowly. "You presented a rather unique problem – one that I confess I did not, and could not have anticipated. You must understand that your culture has changed and evolved greatly since I was last summoned. And as such, some of the roles within your society….caught me off guard," he muttered.

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn the Goblin Kind sounded almost sheepish. "What are you talking about, Jareth? Stop dancing around the issue and just tell me what you mean!"

Some of the force of her otherwise impressive outburst was dampened by the ragged edge in her voice, but it did snap Jareth out of his brooding thoughts. She was correct of course. Time was short.

"Sarah, when I encountered you the night you wished away your brother, I confess I didn't know what to do with you; your ability to summon me, and the fact that you had long since passed your first menarche – to the God's it is sacred, so cease your embarrassment – both of these proved to me that you were an adult.

"Yet when I spoke to you, it became clear to me that you played with toys and costumes as though you were a child, and your resentment of your brother was likewise born of a child's frustration. You were on a cusp, it seemed between childhood and adulthood, and I did not know what to do, and as such….I made a mistake." This last sentence was practically mumbled so that Sarah had to strain to hear it.

"I sensed in you the beginnings of a stirring for what I could offer, but it was no more than that: a stirring that never reached fruition. Somehow, you were too young still. And yet an offer had to be made – my standard trade for a selfishly wished away child are the darkest fantasies and deepest yearnings of the young women. But what you desired was…too innocent to be encompassed in that. So I offered you your dreams instead," he said heavily.

Sarah frowned a little. It sounded like they were getting to the meat of the issue at last. "What is the problem with that? I refused my dreams anyway."

" _That_ was the problem, Sarah," he explained. "That was the problem precisely. Your dreams were still largely those of a child, and thus I was acting beyond my wedge of authority when I offered them to you. And in doing so I caught the attention of the God of Dreams.

"He came to me in great anger over this perceived slight. He claimed that the raw power and beauty of your dreams marked you as belonging to his realm, and my misuse and misrepresentation of such prompted your refusal. And so he has been trying to reclaim you ever since."

Jareth hesitated for a moment, his hands clenched so tightly that his leather gloves creaked. "There is more, I'm afraid; the Labyrinth is a testing ground, Sarah. While my castle is at the center, the maze itself falls into many separate domains of varying Gods. The runners often attract much interest simply by being in the maze in the first place, and the path of the runner and the obstacles she may face will be determined by what Gods have lingering interest."

Sarah, who had been sitting quietly up until this point made a sharp halting gesture as Jareth made to continue. "Stop," she said shortly. She was silent, and strange emotions worked across her face. "Are you really trying to tell me," she began slowly, struggling to keep her voice level, "that I've been trapped in this Labyrinth for years, running the same paths over and over again," (Jareth moved to interrupt her at that and she cut him off again,) "All because you didn't know what a _teenager_ was?" she asked incredulously.

"I already told you, your culture had vastly changed!" Jareth snapped. "When last I was summoned, a girl was considered a full woman by the time she experienced her first moon's blood!"

Sarah let out a strangled cry and Jareth wondered for the first time whether or not she would try to strike him. Fortunately for his sore belly, she managed to wrestle herself back into some form of composure.

"So what you're telling me is that all this time I've been at the center of a – a magical custody battle?"

Jareth nodded, relieved. "That fairly well sums it up, yes," he confirmed.

Her brows knit together again. "Why are you telling me this now? What changed, Jareth?"

He looked away. It was absolutely the worst thing he could have done.

"Jareth?" Sarah swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. "Jareth what are you not telling me?"

In response he fluidly rolled his wrists and brought forth a crystal. He tossed it to her, and unthinkingly, Sarah caught it. She flinched; the last time he threw a crystal at her, it had turned into a snake, after all. But all that happened was that there was a slight weight in her hand. Cautiously she opened her fingers to reveal a small, round compact mirror.

"What am I supposed to do with this? Fix my makeup?"

"Just open the mirror, Sarah. You will understand." Jareth still could not seem to bring himself to look at her.

Suspiciously, she unsnapped the plastic catch and swung the mirror open. The face that stared back at her had lost trace amounts of its roundness, and her cheekbones seemed more pronounced than when she had last looked in the mirror of her room but – she raised her eyes to Jareth.

"I thought you said I had been here for more than twenty years, Jareth," she said, unable to keep the edge of accusation out of her voice. "Why do I still look like a teenager?" It was true – if she had to hazard a guess, she would say that she looked to be no more than seventeen or eighteen years old.

"Because you _are_ still a – teenager, Sarah," Jareth explained, rolling the new word as he spoke it. "Souls very rarely age at the same rate as bodies, and your soul has had little opportunity to mature here as it would in your own world." 

Sarah let out a harsh laugh, though not a single tinge of amusement touched her eyes. "What are you saying? That my body isn't here?"

Silence greeted her. She felt dread thrashing like a panicked snake in her belly.

"You've received many superficial injuries in the Labyrinth, Sarah, have you not?" He asked her abruptly.

Sarah blinked at the question. "Of course," she answered slowly, as though to a small child.

"Where are they?" Jareth asked bluntly.

She scoffed and presented her hands for inspection. She knew she had torn at least several nails to the quick when she had scrambled up that tree. She inspected the damage along with him.

Her nails were perfect and unbroken, ending a respectable eighth of an inch beyond the tips of her fingers. Mortified, she shoved up the sleeves of her blouse, looking for the bruises she knew she had sustained. Her flesh was clean and pale and unmarked. In growing panic, she pulled her shirt up. She _knew_ she had sustained a friction rash when she impacted a tree limb, but her belly was likewise as healthy and clean as an infant's.

Seeing that he had her attention now, Jareth pressed on mercilessly.

"When was the last time you felt you needed sleep, Sarah? How about food? Have you suffered any true thirst?"

His words pounded against the careful screen of denial she had been building up for a long time. An animalistic cry tore its way through her belly and up her throat. She buried her face in her hands, rocking back and forth as she struggled to bring herself back under control.

She must be dead. The thought floated like a dead fish to the surface of her brain and could not be thrust away. She was dead, she was dead, she was dead, she was dead and this was Hell. She was being punished for wishing away a helpless child.

She was snapped out of her circling panic as Jareth cracked a crystal over her head, drenching her with breath catching-ly icy water. She gasped at the shock and glared at Jareth. Her angry words died on her lips however; wonders never ceased – he looked _guilty._

"Sarah, I need you to calm yourself down," he said sternly. "You are not dead."

She gaped at him. Had he somehow heard her thoughts? Or had she been muttering out loud? Ultimately, the issue was never answered.

"But you will be very soon."

Now _that_ got her attention. "Jareth, no more games, no more cryptic phrases." She reached over and gripped his shoulder, much to his astonishment.

Her green eyes blared into his own. "Tell me now, and tell me directly. What happened to me? What is going to happen next?"

In response he conjured up one final crystal. "I think it would be simpler if you saw for yourself," he said quietly.

Sarah leaned forward to peer into the crystal.

"Sarah," his voice gave her pause. "You were very brave. It has not gone unnoticed."

She shook her head and peered into the crystal.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

 _"Toby!" she cried in despair, whirling around to try to get her bearings. Stairwells fragmented like the laws of physics everywhere she turned. She took off running as she spied her brother some distance away, climbing upside-down on a staircase, going in who knew what direction._

 _Jareth's song echoed in her head, but she paid it little attention. Toby. She was so close! She darted up one staircase and froze at its landing. Toby was there below her, sitting on the edge of an archway. He could fall!_

 _She hesitated for merely a second, then squeezed her eyes shut and leapt from her precipice. She leaped too far, overshooting the stone archway and falling through. Toby vanished with a small pop as she fell past him, her eyes still shut. She fell further and further until she smashed into an outcropping staircase._

 _At the moment of impact, she_ split. _And one Sarah vanished with a softer pop as blood poured from her mouth and nose. The other Sarah, unhurt drifted downwards as the Escher room broke apart._

o.o.o.o.o.o.

"No!" Sarah scarcely realized that she screamed out loud, stumbling back from Jareth's outstretched hand. The crystal glinted innocently against the dark leather of his gloves.

"Sarah!" his voice snapped her back to reality.

Trembling, she glared at him. "I just watched myself die, Jareth. You said I didn't die!"

"No, you infuriating girl, I said you _are not_ dead, meaning that at the present moment, you are physically still alive. I never said that you did not die at one point, however."

She glared at him. "That doesn't even make sense!"

He sighed. "There is more. Watch and you will understand."

Trembling in fury and a deep sorrow she could scarcely name, Sarah inched back to the crystal, as warily as though it were a snake that just might bite her.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

 _"There you go. I'd like Lancelot to belong to you now," Sarah whispered tenderly to the sleeping infant as she tucked her favorite teddy bear back under his blanket. Toby slept on peacefully._

 _Sarah made her way back to her room._

 _"Sarah? Sarah are you home?" her father called from downstairs._

 _"Yeah! Yeah, I'm home," she responded with far more gentleness than she had offered him in two years._

 _Seconds later, her friends from the Labyrinth appeared in her mirror to wish her a fond farewell. She smiled and told them that she would always need them. Suddenly they were in her room in the midst of a celebration._

"Jareth, I've already been through all this," Sarah's voice cut through the illusion, bringing both of them back to the colorless nothing space. "I don't know what you're trying to show me."

Jareth wordlessly turned the crystal the other way.

 _"Sarah, are you home?" her father called up the stairs as he helped Karen remove her dinner jacket. The silence in the house was deafening._

 _Karen frowned. "You don't think she could possibly have left Toby alone…?"_

 _Robert shook his head. "No, she's mad at_ us _, I think. She would never leave a baby alone."_

 _Karen shook her head resolutely. "I'm going to go check on Toby." She marched up the stairs, her heels clicking sharply against the wood._

 _Robert sighed and removed his own jacket, hanging it up carefully in the hallway closet. At Karen's piercing scream, his hand jerked back, sending his expensive silk-lined jacket to the floor._

 _"Robert! Robert, come quick!"_

 _Robert Williams pounded up the stairs. Toby was awake now, and caterwauling again._

 _"In here! Oh, god COME QUICK!" Karen screamed from the master bedroom. Robert burst through the door and almost sagged against the doorframe in shock._

 _"Oh god, no…" he groaned, his fist pressed to his mouth._

 _The balcony doors had been flung open. The carpet and drapes were soaked with rain. Toby was standing in his crib, his face red and blotchy. And Karen was on the floor, Robert's only daughter clutched limply in her arms._

 _Fresh blood poured from her nose, staining her creamy poet's blouse. Blood pooled in the corners of her mouth and trickled down into her hair. Where her shirt was rucked up, he could see that the side of her ribcage was black with extensive bruising._

 _"SHE'S NOT BREATHING! DO SOMETHING!" Karen screamed at him, tears pouring down her face to land in her step-daughter's blood-soiled hair._

 _Galvanized into action, Robert thrust Karen away and laid Sarah flat on the floor. He pinched her nose closed and tilted her head back._

 _"Call 911, Karen! Tell them to send an ambulance and as many officers as they can spare!"_

 _As Karen rushed out of the bedroom for the hallway phone, Robert began administering chest compressions and measured CPR breaths. He winced at the cracking under his palms. Sarah's ribs were broken. All of them, at his guess._

 _He continued on and on and on, and as the first red and blue lights shone outside his house, Sarah suddenly drew in a ragged breath. She did not open her eyes._

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

Jareth rolled his wrist fluidly and the crystal vanished in a shower of sparkles.

Sarah sat frozen, staring dumbly at his empty hand.

At last, Jareth broke the silence. "Humans had come so far with their medicine, Sarah. None of us anticipated that you would survive." He paused. "Of course, not one of us who watched and judged ever dreamed that you would go so far as to sacrifice your life for a child only half related to you. I took the challenge too far, Sarah. It was my fault for not anticipating that you would rise to meet it. I am…truly sorry."

Sarah's lips moved, but silence issued forth. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Jareth doubted she even noticed it.

"When a mortal dies, Sarah, they move on to an afterlife. A new life, in the care of whatever Spirit or God believes that their realm would be best suited for them. I myself have no claim on you – you are neither child nor woman, and you yourself renounced any claim I could have had when you burst your way out of my peach dream." He shook his head wonderingly. "You even refused my personal request! I am here now as...well, as a friend I suppose.

"In your world, your body has been sustained for nearly thirty years on a medical system called _life support._ Without this system, you will die."

Sarah nodded. Of course she knew what life support was.

"In approximately twenty minutes in your world, your body will be disconnected from this contraption, and you will die." Jareth paused, cupping Sarah's face comfortingly in his hand. "There is nothing to be done, Sarah," he said softly.

"I understand little enough of this new science, but what I do know is that your brain has apparently sustained too much damage for your body to independently function anymore. Even if your soul were returned to your body, you would not reawaken, and you would simply be trapped in an endless sleep until you were allowed to die."

Sarah nodded, new tears coursing down her cheeks. It wasn't fair. She'd never even had her first date. "What happens now?" she attempted to sound strong.

"Now you and I must meet with the Gods who would guide you to new life in their realm. And you have twenty minutes to choose where you will go."

He stood and offered her his hand. Without hesitation, she took it, and the two vanished from the nowhere space.


	10. Chapter 10

Sarah never detected the shift. One minute she and Jareth were in the nowhere space, and the next she was standing in a room she had not seen for a very long time. The cold floor was comprised of filthy flagstone. Chicken feathers of every color littered the room, along with rusted spears and ridiculously fashioned helmets. A rough throne was shoved almost carelessly against the far wall.

"I never understood why you kept your throne room this way," Sarah attempted to joke.

Jareth curled his lip at the mess. "I live in a kingdom of altered children, Sarah; I forfeited cleanliness a long time ago." 

"A poor terrain to defend in battle," came a voice from the shadows.

Sarah whirled, trying to track the speaker without success. Jareth had not moved from his spot. He sneered at the empty room.

"Come out, Maeva," he drawled, "you have no time for games now unless you wish to forfeit your claim."

The hair on the back of Sarah's neck prickled unpleasantly. She could feel the weight of someone's gaze resting on her, as heavy as a stone. The muscles in her neck (what muscles? Ha!) creaked as she slowly turned to face the speaker.

When Sarah was a little girl, her mother used to wear a tear-drop pendant of some smooth, dark glass, long before the divorce with her father. Sarah had cupped the pendant in her little fist once, wondering aloud what the beautiful substance was, and her mother had explained that it was called _obsidian._ Glass formed from volcanic eruptions.

Her mother's eyes had gleamed a little as she had explained the process to her little daughter, fingering the pendant absently. "Imagine, Sarah," she had said, "imagine all that power and heat and devastation. And I'm wearing a little piece of it around my neck like a pretty bauble."

The eyes Sarah found herself staring into now looked precisely like that; black and depthless, they gleamed like polished glass. Sharp teeth glistened in a wide grin. Sarah took an unsteady step back, and the grin widened by a few molars.

"Hello, Sarah Williams," she purred.

She stepped into the light, her movements quick and silent despite the weight of the spear she carried. Her skin was decorated in so many scars, tattoos, and lines of war paint that it was impossible to tell what color her skin was underneath it. Her features were sharp and proud. Her bare arms and legs were hard with ropy muscle, and she wore a breastplate of oiled leather, dark with age, and a dagger carved from some great animal's claw was strapped to her right thigh. Her white hair was tightly bound to her head in a basket of thick braids.

Jareth came forward and offered her a cold bow. "Sarah Williams, this is Maeva," his eyes narrowed into slits. "The Goddess of the fearless."

She turned her attention to him and offered an equally stiff bow, "Jareth," she acknowledged.

She turned her attention to the seemingly empty throne room and clapped the end of her spear against the flagstones. The clang echoed from every corner of the room. Sarah inched a little further away from both of the gods until she was standing in the precise center of the room on the edge of the sunken pit.

"Come out!" Maeva boomed. "We have little time left; let those who would claim Sarah Williams for their own come forth now!"

There was a rustle of wind through the open window and the pungent scent of fresh, damp earth filled Sarah's nostrils. The figure of another, seemingly gentler woman appeared in the throne room. A heavily pregnant, very _naked_ woman. Sarah felt her face heat up in embarrassment, and she looked to Jareth for confirmation that this was expected.

To her astonishment, Jareth had dropped his cold sneer. He bowed deeply to the strange woman (goddess, Sarah corrected herself absently) and made a warm welcoming gesture to the throne room. Sarah gaped at him; she had never seen Jareth show such respect to anyone before.

She stole a glance at Maeva. Even the warrior offered a more sincere bow to the naked goddess than she had to Jareth, although a trace of a frown still marked her face.

The new woman crossed the room slowly, her footsteps booming throughout the castle. Sarah blinked in surprise; the woman was scarcely taller than herself and although her frame was far fuller than her own, she looked as though she should weigh no more than two hundred pounds at the most.

Yet when she strode across the room, Sarah could see that cracks radiated out into the stone whenever she took a step. As she came closer to the center of the room, Sarah was afforded a closer look; beyond her shape, this woman barely seemed human.

Her skin was the color of rich loam, her eyes swam in shades of ocean blues, greens, and earthy browns. Her long mossy hair was drawn protectively around her swollen belly like a shawl. Small insects leapt in and out of the thick strands of hair.

Her legs were thick and strong, but her skin was as rough and craggy as tree bark. She did not appear to have feet; roots squirmed and twisted with every step she took. Green shoots pushed their way shyly through the cracked stone left in her wake. The hands clasped tenderly round her pregnant belly were well-shaped and elegant, albeit long-fingered. Spring green leaves twined round each digit and down her arms.

She smiled at Sarah, and the girl felt as though all the warmth and light of the sun came to bear on her at that moment.

"Sarah Williams," Jareth began, a bit breathlessly, she thought, "I present to you Lorin, the…" his voice trailed off hesitantly. "The Mother Goddess," he finished at last.

Lorin beamed at him, and when she turned, Sarah saw that thick flowering vines hugged the curve of her buttocks and trailed their way up her bare back. What she had initially taken to be insects leaping in and out of her hair were actually diminutive animals – she swore she saw an antelope spring out near the crown of the goddess' head, diving back into her thick green hair as quickly as it had emerged. Somehow, although Lorin overtopped her by only a few inches, Sarah felt as tiny as a speck of dust before her.

"Have any others come to make their plea to the girl?" Lorin's voice came in a gentle rush that reminded Sarah of the stream in the park back home. She felt a little pang in her chest at the memory of it.

A rough grumble responded to Lorin. Sarah resisted the urge to clap a hand to her nose. That same musky odor she had smelled in the woods had come back in full force. A great shaggy shape clawed its way up through the stones of the sleeping pit. Sarah stumbled back, heart thudding in her chest as a great, horned head raised its eyes to hers.

Black fur hung in ropy tendrils and heavy mats. Its eyes glowed deep in its skull like embers in an ash pit. As it forced its way further and further into the room, Sarah was quickly dwarfed by its great size. Even Ludo would have looked small beside it. It placed its clawed hands on either side of the pit and heaved itself out. Standing on the level floor, its great horns drew long scratches into the ceiling, raining fine dust upon the others below it.

Maeva gripped her spear tightly, sinking into a hunter's stance. In response, the beast roared as it caught sight of the fierce goddess and the claw upon her thigh. Sarah could not help but notice that the number of claws on its great hands were uneven. Automatically, her eyes fell back to the scars twisting down Maeva's right leg.

Unlike the other scars on her face and arms, which looked deliberate in design, these scars were brutal, tearing through her flesh as though she'd been attacked by a great beast of some sort. And then Maeva was answering the beast's roar with a primal cry of her own: a great wordless screech like a jungle cat. As she shook her spear threateningly, many smaller teeth and claws and bone fragments hanging on leather thongs from beneath the spearhead clinked together.

The great beast swiped at her suddenly, its massive arm sweeping across the room. Sarah yelped and ducked, despite Jareth's revelation that she didn't really have a body anymore. Maeva nimbly leapt over the sweeping arm and landed tensed and ready to spring forward and attack.

"ENOUGH!" Jareth's voice rattled the stones in the wall. Sarah swore she heard glass breaking from the room below them.

Maeva checked herself mid-leap. The beast sheepishly drew its arm back and let it hang down by its side, long claws gouging chalky white channels into the grey stone. Lorin had wrapped both her arms protectively around her belly and was gazing at the two would-be combatants with icy reproach.

Jareth was glaring at the two, his hair stiffening into new peaks, his eyes radiating fury. "If you two can refrain from starting a war in my kingdom, we will proceed."

At first, Sarah thought that the two would come to blows anyway. Then Maeva relaxed her stance and backed up a few paces, her spear held at least a tad more loosely in her hands. The beast growled deep in its chest, but bowed its head in deference to Jareth – Sarah still could not bring herself to think of him as a God, forgotten or otherwise – and lowered itself into a crude sitting position.

Jareth gave each of them a lingering glare. He drew in his breath. "Sarah Williams," he said a mite testily, "I present the Nameless God, the Beast Master."

Sarah gulped and offered him a quick bow. "Charmed, I'm sure," she managed to say without squeaking in fright. Honestly this was beginning to verge on normalcy. Silence reigned for an endless moment. From the corner of her eye, she spied Jareth looking expectantly at the window.

Maeva finally broke the silence, tapping the tip of her spear impatiently against the floor. "Will no others stand forth?"

Silence rippled throughout the room. Jareth shook his head, looking at the window again with the faintest trace of bewilderment. Sarah jumped a little as Lorin's crashing footsteps resounded again.

"I believe that Miss Williams has herself banished much of the competition, has she not, Half-Father?" she asked smoothly.

Sarah whirled around to face Jareth, who looked away guiltily. "Yes, please enlighten us, _Half-father_."

Jareth grimaced. "In the beginning hours of Sarah's run through the Labyrinth, she attracted the attention of several Gods, including the Dark One."

A chill zipped up Sarah's spine at the name, although she had not heard it before. The response of the other Gods, however, drove the point home; the Beast Master roared in disapproval, Maeva clashed her spear against the stones so that sparks flew, and even Lorin seemed to grow taller, her hair stiffening around her belly. Jareth held up a calming hand to all of them.

"Peace! The Dark One renounced his claim the instant Sarah cast down her own life for her brother," he assured them.

Sarah felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes and hastily wiped them away. What was done was done. She had learned that about three minutes after wishing away her brother. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Her own determination had gotten her this far. She would not give up now. She would not be a weeping, helpless maiden.

"Since that day, many Gods have approached Sarah in the Labyrinth and tried by trickery or persuasion to lead her into their own realms and thus under their own power. She has rejected outright all of them."

Sarah frowned. She remembered none of this. Surely Jareth had no reason to lie about this. Jareth shot her a look that was not quite sympathetic, but kind enough, perhaps.

"Unfortunately, because she is still mortal, once a God was rejected, she was incapable of holding the memory of it," he seemed to be speaking directly to her now.

"Let girl choose," Sarah jumped at the deep voice issuing from the Beast Master; she had assumed that he could not talk at all.

Lorin nodded in agreement. "Indeed, I sense that she has only minutes left," she said softly.

And suddenly Sarah was furious. She had suffered through thirty years of trial and dangers, never understanding why she felt so weary. She had died, been resuscitated, and then trapped on an endless quest to rescue the brother she had saved within the first ten hours of her ordeal, and now she was expected to choose a realm to spend all eternity in, having just been told that she was dying. It was far, far, too much.

"Stop talking about me as though I'm not here!" she snapped. All four heads swiveled in her direction, as astonished as if the throne had begun dancing vaudeville.

"You ask me to choose a realm to spend all eternity in without the decency to tell me what they are? And you expect me to make this decision within ten minutes?" She balled her fists and placed them on her hips, glaring at each of the Gods in turn.

She only hoped that none of them would notice the intermittent tremors in her knees. Or the fact that her heart was beating so hard, she feared it would burst out of her chest.

"If…" her voice caught a little and she coughed nervously. "If you truly want me to come with any of you, I don't think it's unfair that you tell me what that entails. Maeva, you start, then Lorin, and then…." she faltered again, staring up at the great silent beast. "And then you. Please," she added as an afterthought.

Jareth nodded. "I can't say that her request is too unreasonable," he said solemnly. If Sarah didn't know better, she would have sworn that she had heard the faintest glint of pride in his voice.

Maeva tossed back her head and laughed, the proud lines of her face trembling in merriment.

"The girl is indeed fearless enough," she snickered. Her laughter ceased as quickly as it had appeared as she appraised Sarah a little more closely.

"In your run through the Labyrinth, Sarah Williams," she began, "You have faced dangers and hardships that mightier souls than yours would quail in fear from. You did not shrink away from any of the creatures in the Labyrinth, though to look upon them has induced madness in some. You stubbornly clung to this fool-hardy quest of yours, throwing your mundane life away in pursuit of it."

She bared her teeth at the Beast Master. "You would make a fine warrior amongst my ranks, Sarah. With much training, you would come to know the art and beauty of battle. You would come to feel the power inside of you in full force. You would know what it means to strike down your opponent and feel the rush of bloodlust within your breast."

Sarah shivered as Maeva crossed the distance between them.

"Think of it," she purred. "A warrior whose ferocity surpassed even her beauty."

Sarah's breath caught in her throat. She saw herself reflected in Maeva's glass-dark eyes. The black surface showed her clutching a spear of her own, dressed in animal leathers and furs. Blue paint marked her body in broad swatches. Her hair hung loosely, animal teeth and bones threaded haphazardly through the dark locks. She was snarling at an unknown foe, legs bent and ready to spring at her opponent.

Sarah stumbled back, her hard-soled shoes squeaking against the filthy flagstone. She shook her head to clear the vision from it. She had felt as though she had been drawn into those eyes. She resisted the temptation to scrub away the phantom war paint from her limbs.

"But what of a gentler future, Sarah?" a warm voice sighed in her ear.

Sarah was past the point of questioning how Lorin had crept up on her so silently. She turned to face the Mother Goddess. Warm breath, sharp with the scent of crushed pine needles washed over her face. Sarah felt all the tension in her body melting under her kaleidoscope gaze.

"Let me show you richer worlds, Sarah. Green worlds." She grasped Sarah's hand, sending the girl to her knees with the power flowing through her.

" _Think of it, Sarah,"_ Lorin's voice seemed to come to her from a great distance.

Sarah's mind spun. She was dimly aware that Lorin was still holding her hand, and that she was still kneeling on a floor so filthy the mere sight would have sent her step-mother into a scolding fit. Yet at the same moment, she smelled high summer winds. She heard the chattering of cicadas nestled in long stiff prairie grass. She felt a blaze of sunlight heat up her face.

The wind rushed through her, leaving her breathless. And underneath it all was Lorin. The Goddess' voice murmured in every brook, whispered in every breath of wind in the trees. Sarah felt all of her childhood resentments drain away. She understood intimately now that she had pleased the Mother Goddess.

And then it all stopped as quickly as it had begun. Lorin had released her hand. She towered over the girl, her changing eyes locked onto Sarah's green-water ones.

"In the Labyrinth, you acted as only a true mother would," she said solemnly. "If you come with me, you shall be part of a new, living world. You may be a mother there to other, younger souls than your own."

The hair wrapped round her belly slipped down a little, just far enough for something blue to glimmer through.

"Come Sarah, be a voice in the wind. Be a presence in a new forest to guide lost wanderers. You could rest as a heartbeat in the land."

Her hair slipped a little more. On impulse, Sarah seized the strands and parted them. Lorin made no move to stop her.

Sarah gaped, Wisps of white cloud drifted under the surface of her belly. Blue seas swirled against the coasts of unfamiliar continents. She even thought she could pick out a couple of proud mountain ranges clustered near the heart of one of the larger landmasses.

She raised her face to Lorin's. "What is it?" she asked in a hushed whisper.

Lorin beamed and clasped her hands tenderly across her belly. "A new world, Sarah," she said. "A younger sister to your own. You could be a spirit of the land here. You would live in peace and fulfillment –"

"Until the new batch of people ripped the forests from their roots and leveled the mountains to the ground," Maeva interrupted.

Sarah had turned her attention back to Lorin's belly, utterly entranced, and so missed the warning look the goddess shot at Maeva. Her fingers twitched with desire to touch the surface of that world, to trail her fingertips through the infant clouds. Nearly a goddess herself above the forming world.

Just as her fingers rose unbidden to touch the new world, the animal musk of the Beast Master assaulted her nostrils with such intensity that she clapped her hands to her nose and turned away from Lorin, her eyes watering at the sting.

The Beast chuffed and growled at the indignant Goddess. "My turn," he grumbled.

Reluctantly, she nodded and stepped away from the young woman, spitefully fracturing the stones beneath her feet as she did.

The intensity of the musk lessened and Sarah sucked in a grateful breath. The shadow of the Beast Master fell over her like a shroud. She shivered, but met his silent gaze bravely.

"You…save Ludo," he said at last.

Sarah blinked. She could not say exactly what she was expecting to hear from the great Beast before her, but that was probably the furthest from her expectations.

"What?"

"Ludo was hurt and scared. Goblins hurt Ludo. Sarah saved Ludo," he explained patiently.

Behind him, Maeva's features twisted in disgust. She produced a whetstone from one of the buckled pouches around her waist and diligently sharpened the tip of her spear. Sarah tore her attention away from the angry Goddess; now was not the time for her to untangle this feud. She peered through the tangled fur, struggling to decipher exactly what it was she saw in the Nameless One's eyes; not gentleness, certainly.

At the same time, there was a sort of a kinship between the expression she found there and the feelings of safety she found with Ludo.

"Ludo is one of your – " she froze on the word, her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. Slaves? Subjects? Children? "You are Ludo's God?" she asked at last, hoping that this was at least a tactful phrasing.

The great shaggy head rocked back and forth, his twisted horns tearing new gouges in the ceiling. From over by the window, Jareth shot all of them a sour look. He would have to completely rebuild this room after all the abuse it suffered through. Between the pantheon in his throne room and the reckless force that was Sarah Williams, Jareth found himself considering a vacation for the first time in a millennia.

The Beast Master, meanwhile had knelt down a little closer to Sarah, his arms open in a humble gesture.

"Come with me, Sarah," he growled in as non-threatening a manner as he could manage.

"Be Beast protector."

The scent of his musk washed over her again, stronger this time. She managed to hold herself up under the onslaught, defying the scent that had already floored her once. One last flitting vision came to her.

She seemed to see herself at the end of that long brambly tunnel, crouched in a tree. Sweat and grime were so ingrained into her bare skin that she doubted even the longest shower could remove it all. Her shaggy hair hung like a mat of fur all the way down to the slim branch she was crouching on. Her arms were well-muscled, as though they spent much time hauling her up trees. She appeared to be soothing a small, fanged ball of fur cuddled up to her.

Sarah understood what this God, lacking the eloquence of the others, was trying to tell her: he wanted her to be a comforter in his realm for the lonely beasts who found no kindness elsewhere. The musk was not so terrible now, merely primal. She felt something stirring deep inside her as though in response. Some call to the wilderness humans once belonged to.

Jareth suddenly stood between the two of them and the spell was broken. Sarah found herself shaking her head yet again to clear it as the smaller, flamboyant God stared down the primal behemoth.

"You've made your point quite well," he said sternly. "Now allow her to choose with a clear head in the little time she has left!"

"Yes, Sarah," Lorin chimed in, and across the room, Maeva tucked away her whetstone and nodded agreement.

"The time is nigh. You must choose."


	11. Chapter 11

**To my dear beloved readers – I am so sorry that this chapter took so long. Sarah and I reached a definitive impasse there for a while, and the scenes just weren't spinning. Thank you for the reviews of this chapter and the story thus far – you guys really helped spur me on to finishing this! Thanks for your patience guys, and I hope you enjoy the second to the last chapter of "I Owe You Nothing" – read on and be merry. - Jackmir**

Helen tore herself from her seat on the bed. The bleached newscaster had been replaced by an equally starched-looking sportscaster, who droned on about the latest high-profile player scandals. Helen ignored it and made a beeline for the little address book in her dresser.

She rifled through her through her underwear drawer until she found the little black book taped flush against the back of the drawer. She ripped the tape off and yanked the book out.

Nevaeh rolled over, murmuring sweetly in her sleep. Josiah cuddled a pillow, the filthy stuffed animal having been left behind in that awful throne room. Helen kept half an eye on them both as she flipped through the book. There was a myriad of owed favors she had accumulated in her line of work. At least one of them would be able to tangle the legal lines for a while and grant Sarah a stay of ( _euthanasia_ , a little voice at the back of her head whispered) execution.

There was so little time to put a stop to this; the neon numbers on her clock blinked over to 11:31 as she ran her finger down the list of numbers on the last page of the book. Right there. The last number would have to do.

On her last active mission run, she had been assigned to rescue a wandering civilian from the wrong place at the wrong time. While the call for the mission had come from an undisclosed source, Helen was never content to go into anything without all the facts. It took less than two hours of independent, private research for her to trace the request back to a certain US senator.

Armed with this knowledge, Helen distinguished herself on the field, managing to get both the hostage and the entirety of her squad in and out of hostile territory intact. At the end of the mission, she was privately contacted by an undisclosed number, informing her that she had earned herself an open favor. She had never called it in.

She swiped her cell phone from the top of the dresser and flipped it open, prepared to punch in the number – and stopped as abruptly as she had begun. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead and tickled the end of her nose.

 _"Toby. His name is Toby,"_ Sarah had said.

Helen's fingers trembled minutely, poised above the buttons. How the hell had she missed something like that? Her commander would have docked her a rank. Toby was short for Tobias; Sarah had saved her little brother after all.

So why was she still in the Labyrinth?

 _"injuries…inconsistent with a physical altercation."_

There was no time. She punched in another number, well-used on her phone.

"Bergman's 24 hour Auto Shoppe, you wreck it, we check it," the voice on the line deadpanned. "This is Andy speaking. How can I help you?"

"Andy, this is Helen Johnson. I need a favor. A _specialty_ favor."

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

"Helen?" Andy's voice had lost its professional bored tone. "I thought we were squared away."

Helen's lips curved humorlessly. Andy had almost managed to control the tremor in his voice. Almost.

"I'll be brief, Andy. And you can expect payment for services rendered, of course." 

"What kind of payment?" Andy asked suspiciously.

Her flat smile widened against the mouth piece of her phone. "Why don't we just say I'll owe you a favor?"

"Done. What do you need?" Andy agreed just a little too hastily and far too eagerly for Helen's peace of mind.

 _I told her she was a shit excuse for a sister,_ Helen reminded herself. She owed Sarah this at least.

"How easily could you hack into a patient's hospital records?"

"Depends on the patient. Give me a name and ten minutes and I'll have it for you."

Helen stole a glance at the clock. 11:36 mocked her in blood-red. She was going to throw that thing out the window soon. A second bead of sweat rolled down her nose. She was losing her cool. She took a deep breath.

"Sarah Elizabeth Williams, and make it five minutes."

There was a distinctive squeak on the other end of the line, as though Andy had settled back into an old rolling chair. A rhythmic clacking arose. He was already searching. Little snatches of muttered swears hissed through the phone. The clacking sped up.

Helen tried not to look at the clock and failed. 11:38 blinked back. She resisted the urge to scream at Andy to hurry up with a few more coherent swears of her own. The keyboard rat-tat-tatted like a kid's cheap toy gun.

"Got it!" Andy's cheer broke through her morbid thoughts of wire stripping the clock from the inside out.

"Tell me what you found on her. Be quick!"

"Uh, well, according to the reports, her muscular system has atrophied past the point of non-surgical physical therapy, and the most recent report speculates that only partial mobility of her arms could be regained at this point. But the CT and neurological scans…." Andy trailed off for a moment.

This did not bode well. Andy typically never shut up.

"Christ, Helen. This woman should have been taken off life support years ago. According to this scan, nearly forty percent of her brain tissue has degenerated into cerebral fluid; her latest doctor seems to agree with me. There is a footnote documenting a Dr. Omari Suyhella diagnosing Ms. Williams' condition as irreversible."

"That's more or less the extent of it, other than her initial processing papers and injuries on arrival. Apparently her admitting physician diagnosed her injuries as some form of wide-spread, high-impact trauma 'consistent with a near terminal velocity fall,' but looks like his theory was dismissed as too implausible."

Helen tuned Andy out, even as he continued to drone on and on about the more mundane details of Sarah's medical history. She hit the disconnect button as he was getting into her childhood illnesses; she had what she needed.

11:50 glowed dispassionately across the room. It was now or never. She keyed in the Senator's number. She did not hit the call button yet. There was no logical answer to this problem; all she had was a hunch that maybe Sarah's death would release her. Or it could condemn her to an eternity in the Labyrinth.

Helen closed her eyes and let the phone fall from her sweaty hand. It landed with an anti-climactic little thump on the thick carpet. She sat heavily down on the bed and watched the local news anchor blandly shuffling papers again, waiting to go to her live correspondent at Saint Joseph's Hospital. 11:51. Helen brushed Josiah's forehead free of the cobwebs he had collected in the castle. And like Saint Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, she waited.

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

"Choose now, Sarah!" Maeva's spear was not quite pointed at the younger woman's throat.

Sarah's eyes darted between the Gods. Jareth stood away from them, scanning for something outside the window again. Realization dashed like ice water against her: she was on her own. A teenager against the gods.

"YOU OWE US AN ANSWER!" Maeva boomed.

Seemingly of their own accord, the words spat like poisoned honey from her mouth. "I owe you nothing!"

Where had that come from? That swift denial that felt so natural – a memory sparked briefly: she had said these words before. To whom? Another God most likely. Indignation curled up from somewhere in her belly.

She had no way of knowing how often this had been demanded of her, how many Gods had come demanding an answer she was in no way prepared to give. She took a deep breath and tried to get a reign on her thoughts. A choice had to be made. Or did it? Her eyes widened and her lips curled upwards.

"No."

Maeva's grip faltered for a bare second. "Come again?"

"I said 'no,'" Sarah forced herself not to cross her arms as she defied the Goddess.

"Sarah," Lorin's whispery voice brushed across the tip of her ear. "I know it is frightening for you, but you _must_ make your choice now, before it is too late."

Sarah shuddered, fighting off the waves of calm that Lorin's voice brought her.

"NO," she insisted through clenched teeth. " _You_ want me to be some kind of hunter or warrior," she pointed at Maeva. "If you had spent any time at all watching me, you would know that I am neither."

She swung around to face the Beast. " _You_ want me to be a babysitter for the smaller beasts: I think I speak for everyone present when I tell you that making me a babysitter for _anyone_ is a terrible idea, and I have a list of reasons thirty years long to back _that_ one."

At last she rounded on Lorin, leaving Maeva fuming. The Beast seemed to care little one way or the other.

"And you," Sarah faltered a little; Lorin was smiling faintly.

"Your offer is very tempting; the world you showed me is beautiful, as is the place you offered to me in it."

Lorin's smile widened a bit.

"But I can't accept it."

Lorin's smile hardened, and her eyelids lowered a fraction. "Why ever not?"

Sarah shook her head, brushing away the dark strands of hair that fell across her face.

"I already said it: I'm no babysitter. A protective spirit of the forest or creek sounds lovely and romantic enough, but what happens when I get bored? I've already spent more years than I could keep track of doing the same task again and again and again. I'm ready for something new – I'm ready to choose my own adventures and live my own life."

 _So to speak_ , she added silently.

Something cold tickled the side of her throat. She moved to bat it away and hissed at the sharp edge that met her hand. Maeva's spear. Sarah started to turn, but the spear halted her progress.

"Is this your final decision, then, Sarah Williams?" Maeva demanded from behind her.

The tickle behind her ear became an ache. Could the Goddess' spear harm her even though she didn't have a body? Sarah decided that she didn't particularly want to find out.

"Yes," she said shortly.

The cold point of the spear lifted immediately. Sarah blinked, and suddenly Maeva stood before her, so close her nose practically touched the younger woman's. Sarah was secretly proud that she managed not to leap backward. Things were never what they seemed here.

"An unwilling soldier is a traitor in the making. I relinquish my claim on Sarah Williams."

From the wreckage that had been the sleeping pit, the Beast growled a series of snuffling syllables. Sarah assumed it was echoing Maeva's sentiment.

Lorin vanished from sight without so much as a shimmer, the lingering scent of crushed pine left in her wake.

 _All souls find their way back to me before the end, Sarah_ , her voice murmured in the girl's ear. Sarah shuddered and rubbed the tingling sensation away. She glanced around, not in the least surprised to see that she and Jareth were once again alone in the throne room. She did not question how Jareth had suddenly appeared at her side when he had been standing at the window not a second before.

Something was happening to her chest. Her heartbeat was fluttering like a dying bird. She pressed a hand to her breast, wordlessly looking to Jareth. Her mouth formed the words but no sound came. _What's happening?_

Jareth caught her easily around her waist as she fell to her knees. There was no pain, but at the same time, something inside of her felt as though it was stretching to the breaking point. Tears sprang to her eyes and she clutched at Jareth's shoulder, suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life.

"Sarah," Jareth's voice came to her as though from a great distance. She could no longer feel the hardened leather of his armor beneath her fingers, nor his gloved hands on her waist.

She struggled to bring her focus back to her surroundings, but the stone walls of the throne room seemed to be fading somehow. The gray floor was nearly transparent, the great throne a mere outline. Something over Jareth's shoulder caught her attention though for the clarity and distinction with which it stood out in the room: a simple wooden door stood unsupported just behind the forgotten God.

The pinch in her chest forgotten, Sarah fixated on the door. She braced herself against Jareth's shoulder and raised herself back to her feet, unconscious of his supporting hands. She had to get to that door, she concluded suddenly. There was no rational reason; she simply knew it just as she knew her own name.

"Jareth, where did that door come from?" Her own voice rebounded against her ears as though her head were inside a bubble.

Looking over his shoulder, she did not see the small sad smile on his face. He did not bother to turn around.

"I can't see the door, Sarah," he explained gently. "That door is for you alone."

She took one of her hands off his shoulder and stretched it out, her fingers brushing the plain varnished wood. She trailed her fingers down the panels until they came to rest on the old fashioned door latch. She hesitated.

"What is on the other side of it?"

Jareth shrugged, his chin resting softly on top of her head. "I can't tell you, Sarah. I have neither stake nor right to your afterlife." His voice seemed more distant than ever.

If perchance the barest brush of a sigh ruffled the black silk hair on her scalp, Sarah did not notice it. The brass latch was surprisingly warm to the touch. She grasped it easily – the shape seemed almost molded to her fingers.

"Just a peek won't hurt, right?" she murmured half to herself, rubbing her thumb against the vaguely leaf-shaped latch.

"It won't hurt a bit," Jareth confirmed softly. Sarah faintly noticed that his grasp on her waist seemed to have tightened into an embrace.

"Go on, Sarah."

Sarah depressed the latch and pushed the door open as Jareth moved to softly kiss the top of her head. His lips met empty air. He allowed his arms, embracing nothing, to fall back to his side. Gods never wept for pain or pleasure. Nor did they care for mortals in any regard. Or so the lore prescribed.

"Goodbye, Sarah," he said softly. His expression was unreadable as the clock above the goblin's wine casks ticked to life again.


	12. Chapter 12

**This is it – the last chapter. I went ahead and included the epilogue, because I feel like I've put this off for a really long time. Sorry about that. It's been a really fun ride, and you guys have made it a really fun little fic to write. Thanks and enjoy!**

She was drifting, floating through the white nothing space again. A deep-seated serenity billowed through her. She was moving forward, she knew, drawn on to some point she could not yet see. She realized rather suddenly that she was not breathing; upon the heels of this, she realized she no longer felt the need to.

The silence was deafening but not disquieting. For the first time in as far back as she could remember, that sense of essential _wrongness_ was gone. Her loneliness was not. The white wrapped itself around her like a light blanket.

"Doozy, inn'it?" a rough voice cackled, popping the silence like a soap bubble.

"Hoggle!" Sarah squealed happily as her hand was enveloped in his large, rough, brown one.

She had no idea how the dwarf had entered the nowhere space in the first place, nor did she care. She giggled like a small child as she drew the dwarf into a bone-crushing hug. He grunted, but returned the embrace to her surprise; even after her initial victory, Hoggle had remained stand-offish in the face of her physical affection.

For a quiet moment, they drifted in the white. Sarah released him from her embrace. Hoggle chuckled quietly and backed away, although he still held her hand. He smiled fondly.

"Didn' think you were gonna leave without sayin' goodbye now, didya?"

Sarah flashed him a warm smile in response. He chuckled again.

"Didn' think so."

A weight seemed to have been lifted from her chest. Sarah peered ahead into the nothing again. What was she moving towards? For that matter, what was she moving _away_ from? She started to turn to look behind her, but Hoggle's hand tightened warningly on hers.

"Don't look back, Sarah."

She fixed her gaze ahead without argument. For a moment Hoggle had sounded different somehow. The underlying laughter that she had come to expect in his voice had vanished entirely. Even his manner of speech was different. She stole a glance at her friend.

He was staring resolutely ahead, unblinking. His little legs moved in a measured march. Sarah dimly noted that her legs were not moving at all, though she was somehow still being propelled on. She thought to ask what she was not supposed to see, but the dark look on his face dissuaded her. The question died half-formed in her throat.

"Where am I going?" she asked instead, hoping that was a safer track.

The grim look eased away, to Sarah's relief. Hoggle scratched his head.

"That's a bit complicated," he admitted. "You rejected just about every afterlife offered to ya, and that doesn't tend to leave a lot of options."

Sarah's heart sank. "So I have nowhere to go? Am I going to be stuck _here_ now?" she asked, indicating the white nothingness with her free hand.

Hoggle fixed his eyes on something far ahead. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. His left eye drooped in a wink.

"I wouldn't say you've got _nowheres_ to go just yet."

Sarah strained her eyes trying to catch whatever Hoggle saw in the distance. She might as well have been trying to see patterns on a blank wall. She frowned.

"I don't see…" she began, and then a scent tickled her nose. It was faint and it vanished almost immediately - the scent of dry earth and warm rain.

After being in the nothing space, the faint scent was nearly an assault on her senses. She scrunched up her face in confusion. None of this made any sense.

"Hoggle, I'm dead, aren't I?"

He nodded. She was glad. She had had enough cryptic answers and hints to satisfy her for all eternity.

"So how can I be seeing, smelling…" she held up his hand for emphasis, " _touching_ anything at all if I don't have a body anymore?"

He shrugged. "Ya didn't have a body in the Labyrinth either," he reminded her. "Yer still human, Sarah, just without the meat – new plane of existence is still existence. And you don't stop perceivin' the world like humans do just because yer dead."

Sarah nodded, her thoughts weaving tapestries in every direction. Had Hoggle always had such an expansive vocabulary? Was she immortal now, or could she die on this new plane? She felt a pang in her heart like an atrophied muscle – she hadn't even stopped to consider what her family must be feeling. Cold horror spread like hairline cracks through her serenity – were her parents even still alive?

A new taste seared across her tongue, then vanished. She struggled to identify it. Hoggle was watching her expectantly, one eyebrow raised in a silent question.

"That tasted like the first snowfall before Christmas," she explained lamely. Hoggle chortled again.

"Where am I going?" she asked insistently.

"Like I said," Hoggle repeated patiently, "it's complicated."

"I've got time," Sarah replied drily.

"True enough: all species and worlds have their own God, Sarah. Now if ye manage to get through life without attractin' anyone else's attention, then normally you'd go to them."

"So," Sarah tried to feel enthused, "who is the humans' god?"

"Well," Hoggle gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze and a helpless shrug. "That'd be…Lorin."

He mumbled the last word so softly that at first Sarah didn't understand. Then the implication hit her like a resounding thunderclap. No.

"I said no to her," Sarah said in a small voice. Cold horror clawed its way up her belly, breaking open the cracks in her calm.

Hoggle stopped walking and patted her hand comfortingly. "Like I said, Sarah," he reminded her emphatically, "you still have somewhere to go. A second choice, if you will."

Sarah groaned loudly, and so missed the subtle shift in Hoggle's diction.

"Is it too much to ask that I get told _all_ of my options from the get go?" she complained.

Hoggle roared with laughter. He wiped tears from the corner of his eyes, hiccoughing as he tried to answer.

"You're dealing with _Gods,_ Sarah, so generally speaking: yes."

She shot him a side-long glance. Something was off. But the Hoggle that met her gaze was the same old friend who had always been there for her. The same sly twinkle in his eye, the same laugh lines on his face, same smoke-smelling patchwork clothing. She shook her head trying to dispel the nebulous revelation forming in the back of her mind.

"So if I said no to Lorin, then what am I left with?"

Hoggle seemed to consider the point for a moment, his eyes fixed absently on that point up ahead.

"Humans are unique, Sarah," he said abruptly. "Humans have some of the strongest imaginations out there, and some of the broadest spectrums of psychic gifts and connections. Not particularly strong gifts, but varied gifts all the same."

He shook his head, his thin hair stubbornly clinging to his scalp as though glued there.

"That's not the best way to explain it, but, in essence: humans are their own God. When Lorin is rejected, or she rejects a soul, as long as no other God has a claim then that soul with filter back into the human consciousness."

"Like a ghost?" Sarah ventured.

She could almost swear that Hoggle's face had fewer lines than it used to. He snapped his fingers and nodded eagerly.

"Yes! That's the word. Humans have the option to return as spirits, ghosts. Some of them simply filter back in and are reborn as another human. Quite a few choose to do that, actually."

Sarah's hand wilted in his grasp. He allowed her to pull away from him.

"How do you know all this?" her voice was a toneless accusation.

He sighed. His eyes still twinkled, but for the first time, Sarah noticed the weariness under them.

"I'm very old, Sarah, and very good at paying attention. Especially since no one bothers to hide anything from me." He winked at her again, and she was struck by the deep sadness in the gesture. "There are benefits to being ignored."

Something brushed by her face, too weak to be called a breeze. A puff perhaps, a breath. For a single moment she thought she smelled something like a late summer day. Then it was gone. The white was no longer plain white, she realized suddenly; the palest colors imaginable, nearly white themselves, were bleeding in.

"Hoggle, what's happening?" She clutched at his hand, abandoning her growing suspicion for a moment.

The hand that twined round hers was unmistakably smaller than it had been – nearly as small as hers. She yanked her hand back as though she had grabbed a snake. Hoggle's hair was still as colorless as it had always been, but it no longer clung quite so tightly to his skull. There was no denying that the lines and wrinkles that had mapped his face for so long were smoothing out.

The taste of dried flowers filled her mouth and lingered there. "Who are you?"

The eyes that met hers were the only thing unchanged. The friend she had cherished and trusted above all others. Warmth, wisdom and enough cynicism to corrode a steel wall. He did not answer. He didn't have to.

He held out his hand to her. "This is the last choice you will be asked to make, Sarah." His voice was high, clear and sweet as a glass bell. "I will always be Hoggle to you."

Feeling as though her head was being pulled on a string, Sarah turned to look ahead again. Three paths branched out before her. Light, dust, and the scent of humanity glimmered down the left. At the end of the middle path, a new world opened before her, a world as round and warm as a pregnant belly.

To her right, Hoggle stood with his hand outstretched to her still. And no choice had ever been easier.

A smile broke out like relief on her face as she took the hand offered to her. The last of the dirt brown dwarf fell away like an old leather jacket. Hand in hand with the God of Dreams, Sarah left the nowhere space for the last time.

 _EPILOGUE_

Josiah Johnson whimpered in his sleep. He was not, as Neveah often teased, still a bed-wetter at age seven. He did have a lot of bad dreams though. Dreams he could never fully remember.

Small faceless monsters crowded around him in the dark. He clutched fearfully at an old stuffed toy, despite the fact that mama never would have allowed such a filthy thing in the house. Hoarse laughter came from somewhere he could not see.

And then it was all gone. The darkness, the monsters, the laughter. Sunlight touched his face instead. The wind softly chattered the spring green leaves of large maple trees together. Instead of faceless monsters and grasping claws, a beautiful woman with long black hair and a kind smile held out her hand to him. In her other hand she grasped a slim volume with a pretty blue cover.

There were no more nightmares that night. She read him story after story that he could never remember, but loved just the same. In the green glow of his Yoda night light, Josiah's breathing evened out, a small smile on his sleeping face.

Sarah closed the book as the little boy woke up and vanished from her park. Until next time, she silently wished him well. At any given time, there could be upwards of a thousand children to read to, or have pretend sword fights with, or riddle games until they awoke. It had been understandably overwhelming at first – enjoyable, but overwhelming.

Every once in a while though, she would grant herself a break. She tucked the book away and stretched her spine with a little grin. She'd been working hard, and she definitely deserved a coffee break. Or grog.

With a little laugh Sarah Williams, Guardian of the dreams of lonely children, sped off in a burst of light towards the Labyrinth.


End file.
